Thursday, June 13, 2013

Ribbon & Space Management with OneNote 2013

imagesCA2Y2EGIDid you know that when you rotate your tablet to the Portrait orientation, OneNote 2013 automatically flips to full page mode, meaning it hides all the navigation and chrome, thus maximizing your writing space?

This is a very cool feature for us Surface Pro users who want to use our pen to write notes in the traditional way we’d do it if we had a paper notebook in our hand. But below is a slight tweak I use to help me get access to frequently-used features, while still maximizing space.

This screenshot shows OneNote 2013 in normal mode, with all pages, notebooks, and ribbon headers showing. Notice that I also make use of the Quick Access toolbar at the very top for easy access to my favorite pens, highlighters, and navigation buttons:

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By hitting the diagonal arrow button (next to the Add Page button), I get a full-page landscape view which maximizes my space:

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This is awesome on a tablet where screen real estate is important. It’s also great when you’re sharing your OneNote page to an audience – I use this mode when I’m in a Lync web conference using screen sharing; your audience doesn’t need to see the Ribbon or any navigation tools – just your work.

But if do plan to access OneNote tools, notice that I’ve lost my Quick Access buttons, not to mention the fact that any ribbon action now requires an extra click. No worries, I can use the Show Tabs button at the top of the window:

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Now I’ve still got a pretty clean & maximized space, with just enough ribbon showing to view my Quick Access buttons and ribbon tabs.

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And of course, this is particularly useful in Portrait view:

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What tips do you have for maximizing space in OneNote? Share in the comments!

4 comments:

  1. It'd be even nicer if you could just have the quick access bar shown without the tabs.

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  2. This feature is NOT permanent. it reverts back to minimized view every time you go back to full view, or close and reopen onenote. its VERY frustrating. Please advise

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  4. Great tip ! With maximized space, you loose the ability to go forward/backward in your notebook, which is annoying if you have more than one page to show to your audience. My suggested trick is to add the Previous Page / Next Page buttons in your Quick Access Toolbar.

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