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Saving (Exporting) Notebooks to Share
You can save your OneNote pages, sections and entire notebooks in different formats to share with others. When you are ready to save content, click the “File” tab in the Ribbon to enter Backstage View and click “Export” (“Save As” in version 2010) in the menu on the left. In the “Export Current” (“Save Current” in 2010) section to the right, you can click to select “Page,” to export/save just the page you had selected, “Section,” to export/save just the section you were in when you entered Backstage View, or “Notebook” to export/save the entire notebook.
If you select to export/save only a page or section, you will be presented with several format options in the “Select Format” section from which to choose. It’s important to know which application and version the person you will be sharing the content with will be using to view it. Otherwise, they may not be able to open it. For example, if you export/save the content in a OneNote 2010-2013 format and a person tries to open with an earlier version, they will likely encounter difficulty. The same applies if you choose to export/save the content as a Microsoft Word document. The viewer would need the correct version of Word installed on their computer to open and view it.
If you choose to export/save the entire OneNote notebook (under “Export/Save Current”), you will only have three format choices. But here, you can export/save the notebook as a “OneNote Package” which will save all of the content and OneNote organization such as the sections, pages and subpages. There are also options to export/save your content in universal formats for easy viewing. OneNote 2010 allows you to save a file in an “.mht” format, which is a web page format that can be read by browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox. You can also export/save in “PDF” format (which stands for Portable Document Format) and can be viewed with Adobe Reader. “XPS” is a Microsoft format which can be read with the XPS Viewer. Both Adobe Reader and XPS Viewer are free downloads from Adobe.com and Microsoft.com, respectively.
Once you have selected the format in which you wish to export/save your OneNote content, click the “Export” (“Save As” in 2010) button to launch the “Save As” dialog box. Navigate to the location where you wish to save your content. You can change the name of the file by typing new text into the “File name” textbox. In the dialog box, you can also change the file type in the “Save as type” drop-down, and also change what content to save in the “Page Range” section. When you are ready, click the “Save” button to finishing saving your OneNote content.
Creating a Shared Notebook
One of the great features of OneNote is the ability to share content with other users. Many people can be accessing the same notebook, updating information and adding content – with everything saved automatically. Sharing a notebook for use by multiple people involves saving the notebook to a location that can be accessed by others.
To create a new notebook to share, click the “File” tab in the Ribbon to enter Backstage View. Click “New” on the menu at the left. In the “New Notebook” section, you can click “SkyDrive” (“Web” in 2010) to save the notebook to the SkyDrive of your Windows Live account (if you have one). If you don’t have a Windows Live account, you can click the link to sign up for one. If you save the notebook to your SkyDrive, you can then access it from any computer with an internet connection, just like all your other SkyDrive documents. Instead of saving the notebook to the web, you could elect to save it to a network location by clicking “Computer” in the “New Notebook” section and then clicking the “Create in a different folder” link at the bottom of the area to the right. Navigate to the location and enter a name in the “Name” textbox. When you are ready, click “Create.” OneNote will then display a message that the notebook has been created and is accessible to anyone with access to that network location. The dialog box will also ask if you wish to email a notification of the creation of the notebook. If you select “Email a Link,” your default email client will launch to send an email with a link to the notebook. If you don’t wish to send the email, click “No, Thanks” instead. Once the shared notebook is created, it will appear in the Notebook drop-down, with a small icon to next to its name, indicating that the notebook is shared and will be synchronized. Now, as users access the notebook, changes they make will automatically be saved.
You can also share an existing notebook. With the notebook open, click the “File” tab in the Ribbon to enter Backstage View and then click “Share” in the menu at the left. You can click the link to “Email Others About the Notebook,” which will launch your email client where you can send an email with the notebook details for sharing. You can click the “Share with an Online Meeting” if you are subscribed to any online meetings that support OneNote sharing. Finally, you can also elect to share the notebook with others by copying it to a SkyDrive account or to Microsoft SharePoint (if you use that software) by clicking the “Copy this notebook to SkyDrive or SharePoint” link. That will open a webpage from Microsoft with instructions on how to copy the notebook to either of those two locations.
Inviting Others to Share
You can send email invitations to others that provides them with the location of the notebook and invites them to share. You can only do this with a notebook that has already been shared. To send an email invitation to a shared notebook, click the “File” tab in the Ribbon to enter Backstage View. With “Info” selected at the left, locate the notebook to the right under “Notebook Information.” Click the “Invite people to this notebook” link below the location of the notebook, which takes you to the “Share” section of Backstage View. Click the “Email Others About the Notebook” link to launch your default email application (such as Microsoft Outlook). The “Subject” field will be populated with a short message and name of the notebook. The body of the email will contain the link to notebook. Just enter the email addresses you wish to send to in the “To” field and click “Send” to send the invitation.
