Create and format notes in OneNote

Apply text formatting to notes

You’ll find the editing and formatting controls, which let you change the text’s appearance, to be very familiar if you’ve worked with other Microsoft Office apps, such as Word or PowerPoint.

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Use the controls on the Home tab of the ribbon to format your notes

By default, OneNote creates text by using the Calibri font, with its size set to 11 points. (There are 72 points to an inch.) You can use any font installed on your system to format your text according to your needs. You might want to use one font for your basic note text and another for headlines, for example.

Applying bold, italic, and underline formatting all emphasize the text you formatted, but in slightly different ways. For example, bold text can identify a key term, italics can denote a definition of that term, and underlining can indicate vital words within the definition that help distinguish the term from related concepts. For more specific cases, such as mathematical notes or to indicate a word that should be excluded from a definition, you can apply subscript, superscript, or strikethrough formatting.

Important

The uses for bold, italic, and underline formatting mentioned previously are just suggestions. Use the scheme that makes the most sense for each item in your notebook’s context.

Another way to make text stand out on the page is to apply highlighting, which is the electronic equivalent of using a light-colored marker to distinguish text on a printed page. You can also change the color of specific text. In most cases, the standard black text is best, but red text can identify mistakes to avoid, and green text can indicate action items, or whatever combination works best for you.

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When you first select an entire note or just the text you want to format, OneNote opens a Mini Toolbar that includes most of the buttons from the Basic Text group of the Home tab. This is so you can make your formatting changes as quickly and easily as possible. The toolbar also includes some buttons from the Styles and Tags groups.

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Highlight text to make it stand out from surrounding information

Finally, meetings and classes often cover several topics during each session. You can use the built-in styles to apply several levels of headings to your notes, call out citations and quotes, or format programming code so it’s easier to distinguish from the surrounding text.

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Depending on how comprehensive a note-taker you are, you might want to wait until the pace of your class or meeting slows down before adding heading and other styles. If necessary, you could wait to apply the formatting when you review your notes after the class or meeting.

To change the font of text

1. Select the text you want to format.

2. On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Font arrow.

   

   Format text by using the tools in the Home tab’s Basic Text group

3. Click the font you want to apply.

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You can click within the Font text box and start typing the name of a font. OneNote displays the first font that starts with those characters. When you click the Font arrow, the Font list opens, with the font name highlighted in the Font text box at the bottom of your view of the Font list.

To change the size of text

1. Select the text you want to format.

2. Do either of the following:

   • On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Font Size arrow and select the size you want to apply.
   • Click in the Font Size text box, enter the font size you want to apply, and press Enter.

To apply bold formatting to text

1. Select the text you want to format.

2. Do either of the following:

   • On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Bold button.
   • Press Ctrl+B.

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Add bold formatting to make text stand out

To apply italic formatting to text

1. Select the text you want to format.

2. Do either of the following:

   • On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Italic button.
   • Press Ctrl+I.

To apply underline formatting to text

1. Select the text you want to format.

2. Do either of the following:

   • On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Underline button.
   • Press Ctrl+U.

To apply strikethrough formatting to text

1. Select the text you want to format.
2. On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Strikethrough button.

Use strikethrough formatting to leave text in place but indicate that it should be ignored

To apply subscript formatting to text

1. Select the text you want to format.
2. On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Subscript button.

To apply superscript formatting to text

1. Select the text you want to format.
2. On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Subscript arrow, and then click Superscript. (This button then stays on Superscript by default until you switch back.)

To highlight text

1. Select the text you want to format.

2. Do either of the following:

   • On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Text Highlight Color button to apply the last highlight color selected.
   • Click the Text Highlight Color arrow, and then click the highlight color you want to apply.

To change the font color of text

1. Select the text you want to format.

2. Do either of the following:

   • On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Basic Text group, click the Font Color button to apply the last font color selected.
   • Click the Font Color arrow, and then click the font color you want to apply.

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Make text stand out by changing its font color

To copy formatting from one item to another item

1. Select the text from which you want to copy formatting.
2. On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Clipboard group, click the Format Painter button.
3. Select the text to which you want to apply the copied formatting.

To copy formatting from one item to multiple items

1. Select the text from which you want to copy formatting.
2. On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Clipboard group, double-click the Format Painter button.
3. Select the first item to which you want to apply the copied formatting, and then select the other items you want to reformat, one at a time.
4. When you are done applying the copied formatting, press Esc to release the Format Painter.