OneNote Now Works With Office File Attachments a Lot Better Than Before

Microsoft is rolling out a number of improvements for OneNote across platforms this month.

One of the major new features coming to OneNote is Cloud Attachments. It’s a clever new feature that makes sure your documents and notes always stay up to date. When you save files, like a Word document, on OneDrive and attach it onto a OneNote notebook, it will display a live preview of the Office document. It will even display any changes in real time, and it will automatically update as you update the file through OneDrive. It’s pretty neat.

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The feature will arrive first on OneNote for Windows 10 and Mac in the coming weeks. Both the platforms are also getting support for searching tags in the coming weeks to make finding all your different notes a lot easier.

And for those using OneNote Online, Microsoft is adding the ability to configure AutoCorrect options, as well as introducing a new built-in Emoji keyboard, ability to insert pictures from your camera, and the ability to copy/share links to the different section in your notes.

Microsoft has been making significant improvements to OneNote in recent times, mostly on Windows 10 and Mac. The app is already really powerful, and it just keeps getting better. OneNote is one of the best note-taking apps right now — in fact, I have seen so many students in my university using this app to take notes,  I was actually really surprised.

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Conversation 12 comments

  • red.radar

    Premium Member
    18 October, 2018 - 10:07 pm

    <p>Hmmmmm I maybe in a minority here but I actually think this is a terrible feature. My company uses MS Project Online and the integrated onenote functionality as a way of recording meeting minutes and core team actions. Additionally we use OneDrive as a backup solution. When we upload documents to this notebook they need to remain in the state at the time of upload. This is important when going back in time and tracking down a historical perspective of events. </p><p><br></p><p>If the document is constantly updating then when you go back in time you could be always be looking at the most recent version. Which destroys the historical perspective. Now I have to remember to keep multiple copies because of what could be referencing. </p><p><br></p><p>I hope this is configurable. </p>

    • Travelrobert

      Premium Member
      19 October, 2018 - 12:05 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#354715">In reply to red.radar:</a></em></blockquote><p>Without sharing your fear I would assume it is configurable. Usually when you paste something into OneNote you can choose between Screenshot, File-link, etc. I assume this would be another option. </p>

    • jean

      19 October, 2018 - 5:23 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#354715">In reply to red.radar:</a></em></blockquote><p>recommended practice: prefix the documents filename with a date/version number… </p>

      • george_perry

        20 October, 2018 - 1:08 pm

        <blockquote><em>Good Idea. <a href="#354745">In reply to jean:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • boots

    18 October, 2018 - 11:44 pm

    <p>Chicken?</p>

  • mdsharpe

    19 October, 2018 - 4:19 am

    <p>That's all well and good but this app is unusable for me until they fix the bug where the page moves to the left just by mousing over a list of nested checkboxes.</p>

    • Richardsona39

      19 October, 2018 - 1:29 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#354740">In reply to mdsharpe:</a></em></blockquote><p>I have this issue sometimes too. The fix that works for me is to drag the container (the box around the text/bullet list) slightly over to the right. Then it stops the fidgety side to side scrolling.</p>

  • dontbe evil

    19 October, 2018 - 4:52 am

    <p>But but uwp sucks, you cannot do anything… Oops one note is a uwp</p>

  • Rob_Wade

    19 October, 2018 - 8:34 am

    <p>All I want is the ability, on any platform, to TURN OFF the OneDrive Preview feature. Good GRIEF I hate that feature! When I click/tap on an Office file via OneDrive I WANT TO FLIPPING OPEN IT IN THE APP!!!!! Why is this such a difficult thing to comprehend? That's how it USED to work? Why can't Microsoft just leave things that work alone?</p>

    • whineylobster

      19 October, 2018 - 1:51 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#354785"><em>In reply to Rob_Wade:</em></a><em> OneDrive is a cloud service to support Office365 so all documents are opened in the browser based versions of Office. If you want to open it up first in the app… just open the file locally. The file you are opening on OneDrive is a cloud file… for every one of you who complains they want to open it in the app, there are maybe 1000 others who think its dumb to have to download a cloud file locally to work in it. </em></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><em>But in any case…. if you click the three dots to the right of any file listed on OneDrive it will open up the actions tab… and you can easily select open in app. (Open -&gt; Open in (Name of app)). So…</em></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><em>You're not the only user. For MOST users what you describe would be terribly inefficient. But for users like you, you can just easily click the open in app button once the cloud file loads or you can select open in app from the Actions menu.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

    • whineylobster

      19 October, 2018 - 2:09 pm

      <p><a href="#354785"><em>In reply to Rob_Wade:</em></a><em> Also…. if you look at the top left on OneDrive there is an action menu for "selected" files… It is to the right of the Search Anything left panel. You can choose multiple files and click here to choose open in app… You can do this for one or multiple files… or you can use the action menu on each file to open them in app.</em></p><p>Sigh…</p>

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