- Insert screen clippings and pictures
- Choose correctly between an attachment, a printout and an Excel spreadsheet
- Record audio linked to your notes and apply a page template
Elvin is a first-year university student. For a single lecture he has PDF slides, an Excel sheet of lab measurements, a chart from a website and an audio recording made with the lecturer's permission. OneNote lets him keep all of it on one page, right next to his notes. In this lesson you will learn the main commands on the Insert tab.
The `Insert` tab at a glance
| Command | What it adds | Good for |
|---|---|---|
Pictures | An image or photo from your computer | A photo of the whiteboard |
Screen Clipping | A snapshot of part of the screen | A chart from a website or a slide |
File Attachment | The file as an icon on the page | A Word document or PDF to keep with your notes |
File Printout | The file's pages as images | PDF slides you want to annotate |
Spreadsheet | A new or existing Excel spreadsheet | Lab measurements |
Record Audio, Record Video | A recording linked to your notes | A lecture (with permission) |
Link | A link to a web page or file | Sources and references |
Page Templates | A ready-made page design | Lecture notes, to-do lists |
Screen clippings and pictures
- 1Start the clipping
Select
Insert › Screen Clipping: OneNote minimizes and the screen dims. - 2Select the area
Drag across the part you need — it appears on the page as an image.
- 3Or use the Windows tool
Press
Win+Shift+S, select an area, then click where you want it in OneNote and pressCtrl+V.
Insert › Pictures adds a photo from your computer — for example, a phone picture of the whiteboard. A screen clipping is just an image: no link to the source is kept, so add the source link next to it if you need it. Select a picture and drag its corners to resize it.
Files, printouts and spreadsheets
File Attachment puts a file on the page as an icon that you double-click to open. File Printout inserts the pages of a document — PDF slides, for example — as images, so you can write notes next to each slide. Insert › Spreadsheet offers New Excel Spreadsheet and Existing Excel Spreadsheet; for an existing file you choose Attach File, Insert Spreadsheet (the whole sheet) or Insert Chart or Table (just one part). You can delete printout pages you don't need and keep only the slides that matter.
Audio and video notes
As soon as you choose Insert › Record Audio (or Record Video), a media icon appears on the page and recording starts. Stop it with Stop on the Audio & Video tab. Everything you type during the recording is linked to that moment: select See Playback and, as the recording plays, OneNote takes you to the notes you wrote at that point. Recordings are stored inside the notebook: a long video makes it much bigger, so for a lecture audio is usually enough.
Links and page templates
Ctrl+K (Insert › Link) links the selected text to a web page or a file. Insert › Page Templates opens the Templates pane with the categories Academic, Blank, Business, Decorative and Planners; Academic, for example, has Simple Lecture Notes and Detailed Lecture Notes. A template can be applied only to a new, empty page. You can save your own design with Save current page as a template.
Key points
Screen Clipping, orWin+Shift+SthenCtrl+V, brings any part of the screen onto the page.File Printoutplaces PDF pages as images so you can write notes beside them.- An inserted Excel spreadsheet is a copy and doesn't stay in sync with the original file.
- Notes typed during a recording are linked to that moment;
See Playbackshows them. - Templates live in
Insert › Page Templatesand apply only to a new, empty page.
Check yourself
10 questions. Every correct answer earns XP.