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Notebooks in OneNote are made up of sections and pages. Pages contain your actual notes, whereas sections contain collections of related pages. Each notebook can have as many sections as you want, and any section can have as many pages as you want. Similarly, your pages will never run out of “paper” — you can keep adding more space to any page whenever you need it.

Depending on your preference, you use a single notebook and fill it with additional sections and pages over time, or you can choose to create several additional notebooks to keep the information in your life organized separately. For example, you could create separate notebooks for the things you care about at home, at work, and at school. There’s no wrong way to stay organized in OneNote — it’s up to you!

Create a new page

To create more space in your notebook, you can add as many pages as you want.

Note: OneNote for Mac does not currently support creating pages using templates.

  1. Click the tab of the section in which you want to add more pages, and then do any of the following:

    • On the top menu bar, click File > New Page.

    • At the bottom of the vertical page list, click Add page. You may need to click the Show Navigation (Navigation button turned off in OneNote for Windows 10) button on the left to see the page list.

    • On your keyboard, press Command-N.

  2. Type a page title when the new page appears. To do so, click the line shown over the page creation date/time stamp at the top of the page, type a description of the notes the page will contain, and then press Return.

Tip:  New pages are automatically added to the bottom of the page list in the current section. To change the order of your pages, drag any page name to a new position in the list. You can also change the default behavior of where new pages appear. In the top menu bar, click OneNote > Preferences > Navigation.


Create a new section

Sections in OneNote are like the color tabs in a typical 5-subject paper notebook that hold a separate collection of pages. However, in OneNote, you can have as many sections as you want.

  1. Do any of the following:

    • On the menu bar, click File > New Section.

    • At the bottom of the vertical section list, click Add section.

    • On your keyboard, press Command + T.

  2. Type a name for the new section, and then press Return.

New sections always contain one blank new page. You can start taking notes on this page, create your own, or move pages from other sections into the new one.

Note: You can also group related sections using section groups. Learn how to create section groups.


Create a new notebook

You can create additional notebooks at any time to keep your work and your projects organized separately. Multiple notebooks also make it easier to keep personal notes private while at the same time sharing selected notebooks with others whenever you want to collaborate on a project or plan.

To create a new notebook, do the following:

  1. If necessary, sign into the account where you want to create a new OneNote notebook.

  2. Click the Notebooks list dropdown arrow that appears above the section and page lists. You may need to click the name of the current notebook to see the list of all notebooks.

    If you don't see your list of notebooks, click the Show Navigation (Navigation button turned off in OneNote for Windows 10) button on the left.

  3. At the bottom of the Notebooks list, click Add notebook.

  4. In the dialog box, on the left, click New.

  5. Select a color for the new notebook (optional).

  6. In the Name box, type a descriptive name for the new notebook.

  7. In the Where box, select which online account will be used to save the notebook. A OneDrive account is required for creating a new notebook.

  8. Click Create.

    Tips: 

    • A new notebook is automatically opened as soon as OneNote creates it. You can find all of your open notebooks and easily switch between them by clicking the Show Notebooks button (Navigation button turned off in OneNote for Windows 10) on the left

    • By default, new notebooks are created on the OneDrive account that you’re currently signed in with. If you skipped Step 1 and you want to create a notebook on a different account, you must first sign into the account you want before following the rest of the preceding steps.

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