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How to reorganize page templates

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I have seen a couple of questions about this on the OneNote discussion group, so I decided I should post a comprehensive explanation.

This refers to OneNote 2007 page templates (used to be called "stationery" in OneNote 2003).

 

Summary: It is possible to reorganize the custom templates that you create and also the templates that you download off Office Online. You can reorganize the templates into your own groups.

 

Steps:

  1. When you create the your custom templates, they go into the My Templates group in the Templates pane.

My Templates group in the Templates pane

This is actually just a special section file that is stored in this directory: 

C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

I say "special" because for every page there is also a hidden template name property that got put in there when you saved the page as a template. This name is used in the Templates pane.

 

When you download templates from Office Online they also go into the same folder, and appear as another bold group in the Templates pane.

 

Downloaded group in the Templates pane

 

  1. You can open the Templates directory as a notebook and reorganize your stationery. To do this, click File > Open > Notebook and specify the path to the Templates directory.

When the notebook opens you will see "My Templates" as a section, along with any other sections corresponding to the templates you downloaded from the web.

 

Template sections in the notebook

 

  1. Create other sections that represent the groups that you want to have, e.g. Agendas, or Personal. Move the pages from the My Templates section to these new sections. You can just drag and drop.

Note: Don't forget to remove the empty pages from the Agendas and Personal sections.

 

  1. When you are ready, close the notebook (File > Close this Notebook)

 

  1. Restart OneNote and go to Templates pane. You should see your new groups in the pane.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 02, 2006
    Thanks so much for this info.  This really helps.  It would be very helpful if this info could be included in the help somewhere. Note that the images above don't show up in my browser. When I tried to follow these directions on One Note 2003, the only options available from File -> Open are Section and Folder. I was able to open the Templates folder by selecting File -> Open -> Folder, but it didn't add that folder to the hierarchy that is displayed when I selecte "Move" on a section or "Move Page To" on a page. Ultimately what I did was copy all the .ONE files from the Template folder to a Templates folder under My Notebook, make my edits, delete all the templates under Application Data, then move my changed .ONE files to Application Data...Templates. A couple recommendations:
  1.  Add a Stationary Management feature to OneNote.  This would be much simpler than the procedure here.
  2.  Add the ability to drag-and-drop sections to allow them to be ordered across the top. Thanks, David

  • Anonymous
    October 02, 2006
    (Sorry for the images. I will fix that) I am glad this worked for you in OneNote 2003. This procedure is indeed not our ideal, but it is a workround that people can use until we do a better template management UI. In OneNote 2007, you can use drag and drop to reorder sections at the top and to do any other kind of reorganization.

  • Anonymous
    May 14, 2015
    i'm trying to push custom onenote 2013  templates to clients with group policy, im trying to create/push a .one file to ....roamingMicrosoftTemplates but keep failing... is there a better solution?