OneNote has become a serious player in the note taking app space but it is much more than just for notes. OneNote allows you to create everything from lists to notes with embedded photos to being a platform to sync content from Office Lens or other apps on your Windows PC and Windows Phone. In Windows Phone there is a big feature that is often overlooked but can be very handy, particularly for lists or a note you need to continually access. That feature is the ability to pin a note to your Start screen on your Windows Phone. In this How To I will show you just how to do this in OneNote so you can take advantage of it.
In OneNote on Windows Phone, go to the notebook and then to the note that you are wanting to pin to your Start screen. Any note you can pin to your Start screen on your Windows Phone, even
those with embedded images or other files. Once you get to the note you want to pin, go to the menu button in the lower-right corner of the OneNote app and open the menu. The 3rd option down is to “Pin to Start”. Tap this and you will be taken back to your Windows Phone’s Start screen where the note that you just pinned will now appear.
While there is no real limit to the number of tiles you can pin to the Start screen in Windows Phone (there is a maximum of 15 tiles that can receive Live Tile updates beyond the built-in apps) there is a practical limit. The more you pin – be it apps or OneNote notes – the more scrolling you will have to do to get to those apps. The idea behind being able to pin these notes is to give you quick access to the two or three you need access to all the time. After that it may be faster and less confusing to open up the
OneNote app itself.
Note also there is a limit to what can be pinned to the Start screen in OneNote. It has to be a note at this point and not a notebook. This is a sizable limitation in my mind as the need to pin my notebook for say my work meeting notes is more important to me than a specific note about a specific meeting in that notebook. Hopefully with Windows 10 and the updates coming to the Office apps we will see better pinning abilities in OneNote.
For other How To’s for Windows and Windows Phone, be sure to check out my How To pages. If you have a tip or trick you’d like to share, use the Contact page and let me know. When I post it I’ll make sure you get the proper credit.
While we wait for Windows 10 on mobile, I created an app, “Pinmore for Onenote”, that allows you to pin tiles for sections and notebooks on Windows Phone, rather than just the note tiles that the OneNote app provides.
It also allows you to create new notebooks and sections from the app, rather than having to use your desktop or the website.