Skip to main content Copilot Word Excel PowerPoint Outlook OneDrive Teams Copilot Studio Work IQ Cowork Individuals Business Enterprise Education Plans and pricing Support Customer stories Blog Copilot vs. competitors Tech community Frontier program AI for Work Roadmap Agents New user onboarding Roll-out and adoption Prompts and use cases AI knowledge Connectors Open Copilot Download the app

Discover what’s coming to Microsoft Ignite, Nov 17-20, 2026. Register now.

Today’s post was written by Brad Corob, program manager for the OneNote team.

Last year we made OneNote 2013 (our full-featured Windows desktop software) free for personal use and the response was overwhelmingly positive. We’ve heard from many of you that enjoy the ability to take and share notes, ink and highlight directly on the page and stay organized with instant search. And we’ve also heard from many who want more from the OneNote 2013 free edition.

Today we’re happy to share that we’re adding even more to the free edition. We’re removing all feature restrictions from OneNote 2013. Starting today you’ll be able to access the full power of OneNote on your PC, including these features previously reserved for paid editions:

  • Password protected sections—Add a password to protect sensitive information.
  • Page history—Easily see or go back to prior versions of a page.
  • Audio and video recording—Take notes while recording, and easily jump to the relevant section later.
  • Audio search—Search for a word in a voice or video recording.
  • Embedded files—Insert Office documents or other files directly in your notebook.

The free edition of OneNote stores your notes on OneDrive for easy access across all your devices and works whether you’re online or offline.  With your free Microsoft account, you’ll get 15 GB of OneDrive space for free and no limits on the number of notes you can create or sync.

OneNote 2013 runs on Windows 7 and Windows 8 and is available for free from onenote.com/download.

Microsoft

The Microsoft 365 Marketing Team


See more articles from this author