Using OneNote for collaborative note-taking

Taking notes with your classmates or colleagues is a great way to ensure that you don’t miss any important points discussed in a class or meeting. Learn how you can use OneNote for collaborative note-taking.

How to collaborate on notes with OneNote

OneNote is an excellent tool to quickly create, write, and organize your notes. If you want to take even better notes, consider sharing your notes with classmates, colleagues, or friends. Collaborative note-taking ensures that no one forgets to add important points to their notes and makes it easy to share input from anywhere any time.

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There are a few different ways that you can create a OneNote shared notebook. To create a OneNote shared notebook:

Open OneNote.
Select the notebook that you want to share.
Click the File tab in the top left corner of OneNote.
Next, select Share.
From here, there are a few ways that you can share your notebook. Select Share with People if you want to share a OneNote notebook with a team member via email. If the team member is in the same work or organization as you, you can type in their name.
Next, determine what type of access you want the person to have to the OneNote team notebook. You can give the collaborator editing access, meaning they can delete or add new things to the notebook. You can also give someone view-only access, meaning they can view the notes you take but they can’t add to or delete text in your notes.
After you determine editing permissions, you have the option to include a personal message when you share a notebook with someone, though it’s not required.
Click Share once you’re ready to give team members access to your notebook.

You can also share your notebook with team members via a link. This means that other notetakers can click on the link that you send them to view or edit your notebook. Sharing a notebook with a link is preferable if you’re sharing a notebook with a large group of people or if you don’t have everyone’s email address. To share your OneNote notebook with a link:

Open OneNote.
Select the notebook that you want to share.
Click the File tab in the top left corner of OneNote.
Next, select Share.
If you want to only give a team member the ability to view a notebook but not edit it, select Create a view link. Copy and paste the view-only link to share your notebook with people.
If you want to give a team member the ability to view and edit your notebook, select Create an edit link. Copy and paste this link to share your notebook with people.

“Collaborative note-taking ensures that no one forgets to add important points to their notes.”

If you’re in an online meeting, you can collaborate on notes with other meeting members. To share your notebook with other meeting members:

Open OneNote.
Select the notebook that you want to share.
Click the File tab in the top left corner of OneNote.
Next, select Share.
Select Share with Meeting.

When you share your notes with an online meeting, a link to the notebook will be shared will all the meeting members. Meeting details will be automatically added to the notes page.

Once you start collaborating on notes with others, you’ll see their initials appear next to the notes that they added. If you’d like to see which notes a specific team member added to the notebook:

Choose the History tab.
Select Find by Author.
From here, you’ll have the ability to search by author to see what each team member added in your shared OneNote notebook.

Collaborating in OneNote is a great way to take digital notes in real time with others. If you’re interested in learning more about OneNote, get tips on how to use OneNote for meeting and class notes.