How to share a OneNote notebook

One of my favourite parts of using OneNote is the ability share content with colleagues or friends. When you share a OneNote notebook you allow for collaboration with others, making it easy for multiple people to work together on projects, share ideas, or access important information. When sharing a notebook, you can invite others via email or generate a sharing link, giving them either view-only or full editing access.

One beneficial feature is real-time co-authoring, where multiple people can contribute simultaneously to the notebook information. This helps to improve each persons work flow as there is no need to wait while another user is working on the file. OneNote also includes version history, which tracks changes and allows you to revert to earlier versions if needed.

Share a notebook

To share a notebook in OneNote, it must be stored in the cloud, such as OneDrive or SharePoint, as local notebooks on your device cannot be shared with others. If you have not yet created the notebook, check out my post on how to create a new notebook and ensure you save the file to a cloud location.

To share a OneNote notebook:

1. Open Microsoft OneNote along with the notebook you wish to share.
2. Click the Share button located in the top right corner of the OneNote window:

3. From the menu, choose Share Entire Notebook:

4. The Share window will appear:

5. Type in the name or email address of the person you wish to share the notebook with.
6. Use the Permission menu to choose if you want to grant Can edit or Can view access:

7. Click in the message box to add a message to the user:

8. Click Send.

Open a shared notebook

When a colleague, teacher, or classmate shares a notebook, you receive a link that allows you to open it directly in your OneNote app or OneNote online. This feature promotes teamwork and enhances learning by enabling users to view, edit, or contribute to shared notes, lesson plans, or brainstorming sessions.

To open a shared notebook:

1. Open the email message invitation:

2. Click the Open button.
3. The notebook will open into OneNote Online.
4. You can choose to work with the notebook in OneNote online, or open it in the Desktop app.
5. To open in Desktop App, click the Editing button in the top right corner:

6. Choose Open in Desktop.
7. The notebook will open in the OneNote desktop app.

Change shared access to a OneNote Notebook

Once you have shared a notebook with others, you may at some stage need to either remove access or edit the level of access someone has. This means you can change a user from having read only, or view only access and provide them with edit level access, or vice versa, change them from being able to edit content to only being able to read the content.

What if you want to stop access all together? Let’s look at how you can edit shared access to a OneNote notebook.

1. Open the notebook you wish to edit access for.
2. Click the Share button located in the top right corner of the OneNote window:

3. From the menu, choose Manage Access.
4. The Manage Access window will appear:

5. You will now see which users (People) have access to the notebook.
6. To change the permission level for a user, click the Permission button beside their name:

7. Click the Direct Access menu and change between the two permission options.
8. Click Apply.
9. To remove access, click the permission button and select Remove direct access:

10. Click Apply.
11. The changes will be applied to the notebook.
12. No notifications are sent to the user to advise them that they have had permissions changed or lost access to the file. They won’t know until they try to access the file next.

So I hope this helps to get you started with sharing your OneNote notebook with others. This is a great feature of OneNote which I’ve used many times over to allow collaboration with others. From planning a holiday with family and friends to organising your household budget and shopping to sharing information on your next project, OneNote provides you with a simple way to keep track of information and share it when needed. Be sure to check out some of my other OneNote posts for more tips.