How to use Tags in OneNote

If you are using OneNote then you’ll know how quickly notebook can fill up with notes, project ideas, research, and to-do lists. This makes finding important information a challenge, but that is where tags come into play.

What is a tag?

Tags are one of OneNote’s most useful features, yet many people barely scratch the surface of what they can do. Tags help you to efficiently manage projects, study notes, event planning, or just simply keep your notes organised as they help you categorise information and find it again in seconds.

OneNote provides a variety of predefined tags such as “To Do“, “Important“, “Question“, “Idea” and “Reminder,” among others. You can also create custom tags to suit your specific needs.

Tags can also be used in combination with the OneNote search function to quickly locate tagged items, which helps you streamline the process of finding specific pieces of information within a large notebook.

How to add a tag?

Applying a tag to a note in OneNote is very simple. OneNote even provides nine (9) shortcut key combinations that you can use for the tags you use the most.

To tag a note:

1. Open OneNote.
2. Locate a Notebook you wish to use and navigate to a section and page which contains some notes.
3. Place the cursor in the first note you wish to tag. If you have not created content in OneNote before, check out my post on how to create text-based content in OneNote.
4. From the Home tab, locate the Tags group:

5. From the gallery, click the To Do tag, or press Ctrl + 1 as indicated. Alternatively you can click directly on the dedicated To Do Tag button from the ribbon.
6. A checkbox will appear on the left side of the paragraph. This is an interactive checkbox that you can leave unticked or click to tick it:

7. Repeat to add the To Do tag to any additional notes.
8. Now click into a different note.
9. From the Home tab, click the Important tag, or press Ctrl + 2 as indicated:

10. A star will appear on the left side of the paragraph:

11. Place the cursor in a third note.
12. From the Home tab, use the drop-down arrows to open the Tags gallery and see the full range of tag options:

13. Click the Question tag.
14. A question mark will appear on the left side of the paragraph:

Change the order of tags & shortcuts

By default, OneNote applies keyboard shortcuts to the first nine (9) Tags in the gallery. You can control the order of the tags in the gallery so that the ones you use most frequently are located towards the top of the list and therefore will have a shortcut key applied to them.

To edit the tag shortcuts:

1. From the Home tab, use the drop-down arrows to open the Tags gallery and see the full range of tag options.
2. Choose Customize Tags from the bottom of the menu.
3. The Customize Tags dialog box will appear:

4. Locate a tag you wish to use that is outside the first nine listed.
5. Select the tag and use the Move Tag Up or Move Tag Down buttons to move the tags position in the list:

6. When you are happy with the position of the tag in the list, click OK.
7. If the tag is within the first nine in the list, you will be able ot use the shortcut key to apply it to a note.

Create custom tags

OneNote provides approx. 49 tag options to choose from. You then have the ability to create your own custom tags where you can select a symbol along with a font colour and/or highlight colour.

To create a custom tag:

1. From the Home tab click the drop-down menu on the right side of the Tags gallery:

2. Choose Customize Tags at the bottom of the menu.
3. The Customize Tags dialog box will appear:

4. Click New Tag at the bottom of the dialog box.
5. The New Tag dialog box will appear:

6. Give the new tag a Display name.
7. Select the Symbol button and choose a symbol to use for the tag.
8. Select the Font Color button to choose a font colour or leave as Automatic.
9. Select the Highlight Color to choose a highlight colour or leave as None.
10. A preview will be displayed:

11. Click OK.
12. The custom tag will be included in the list.
13. Select a note in the notebook and apply the new tag.

Modify a tag

If you wish to modify an existing tag, you can change the name, symbol, font color and highlight color.

To modify a tag:

1. From the Home tab click the drop-down menu on the right side of the Tags gallery:

2. Choose Customize Tags at the bottom of the menu.
3. The Customize Tags dialog box will appear:

4. Select the tag you wish to edit.
5. Click Modify Tag at the bottom of the dialog box.
6. The Modify Tag dialog box will appear:

7. Make any changes as needed then click OK.

Search for a tag

Searching for tagged notes is an effective way to quickly locate important information you’ve marked for follow-up or categorisation. To search for tagged notes, you can use the Find Tags option in the Home tab, which allows you to filter and view all notes with specific tags across sections or entire notebooks. OneNote will generate a summary of the tagged notes, making it easy to review tasks or important details at a glance.

To search for tagged notes:

1. From the Home tab locate the Tags group:

2. Click the Find Tags button.
3. The Tags Summary pane will appear on the right side of the screen:

4. OneNote will group each type of tag and show you a preview of the text associated with each tag.
5. At the bottom of the pane, you can change the Search options and choose between many options:

6. If you change the Search location, click the Refresh Results button for OneNote to search again using the new location.
7. To change the grouping of the tags, use the Group tags by drop-down menu:

8. Add some additional tags to different pages, or across different notebooks.
9. From the Tags Summary pane, click the Create Summary Page button:

10. A new page will be created within the current section with a summary of all tags included.
11. Add a page title such as Tag Summary. Each tag within the summary is linked back to the original notebook/section and page it is located on:

12. Hover over a tag to see the OneNote icon appear to the left. Click the icon to go directly to the notebook/section/page that tag is located on:

Remove a tag

Let’s look at how to remove a tag if you have applied one to a note, and you no longer need it.

To remove a tag:

1. Select the sentence or paragraph which has been tagged.
2. Click the drop-down menu on the right side of the Tags gallery.
3. Click Remove Tag.
4. The tag will be removed.

Tags are a simple feature, but they can make a big difference to how organised and productive you are in OneNote. Take a few minutes to experiment with the built-in tags and consider creating some custom tags that match the way you work.

Don’t forget to leave any comments below or check out some of my other OneNote posts to help you become more efficient using OneNote.