My customized quick access bar
One of the things I tend to do when I use OneNote (as opposed to test the product) is to minimize the ribbon. I just want the extra screen real estate, and that's why OneNote starts with the ribbon minimized when you first start it. That means that some of the tasks I perform often and that require the ribbon can wind up taking a little bit longer to complete than normal. I would need to expand the ribbon, click the tab on the ribbon I want, then make my selection. I don't typically need to close the ribbon after this since I usually just single click the tab I want. This causes the ribbon to expand only long enough to allow me to click a command, then it minimizes.
But I do not want to go through all that rigmarole for my most common commands. If you look above the ribbon, there is a small toolbar next to the OneNote icon. That's the "Quick Access Toolbar" and can be customized with any command from the ribbon. If you click the down arrow at the right of the toolbar, you can choose some of the more common commands, and lets you choose any command available via the "More Commands…" option.
Here's what my QAT looks like:
I have the Back button and I added the Forward button. Since I typically have a large number of notebooks open (around 20), I use the navigation features heavily. I added the image rotation command since I tend to use it a lot - I always seem to take photos at the wrong angle… I add tags a lot, so I add this command here. I usually use keyboard commands, but there are only 10 of those available. This command lets me get to all my tags more quickly. I also removed undo, since I use the keyboard command for that instead. I also removed the full page and dock commands.
The More Commands dialog also lets me save a customization file which these changes. This means that when I need to wipe my machine and test a new version of OneNote, or otherwise need to move to another machine, I can simply import my file and see my changes.
It's a nice little feature that lets you customize OneNote and since I use it all the time, I wanted to point it out. I take it for granted - go ahead and give it a try.
Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John
Comments
Anonymous
August 06, 2010
I use OneNote mainly on a old HP tablet and a little on a desktop For the tablet, I have Undo, Redo, and Full Page View, Type Text or Select Objects, and Favorite Pen 1 & 2. I haven't modified my desktop QAT yet.Anonymous
August 15, 2010
Hi John, thanks fro the nice article which IMHO should be spread in the community. It's been one the first things I did during the Beta to custome the QAT. Really useful as we lost customizable toolbars :-( And I placed it below the Ribbon - makes things more comfortable IMO. There's one thing, hiwever, which has been bothering ever since: I lost my easy way of changing the editing language. I need to switch the language from German to English and vice versa every half hour (at least). In ON 2007 I could place the command for the lanuage selection in the toolbar and by this had a drop-down listbox with English and German on top. So things were very easy and I was a happy camper ;.) Different now: Closest I can get is adding the language selection command to the QAT. However, this opens the dreadful language selection pane with its. app. 200+ languages. Not only the pane itself popping up disturbs me (especially on my TabletPC in portrait mode). It needs scrolling in the endless list and I have to pay attention not to make the wrong choice. {siiigh}. I don't need no "Afrkaans and no "Zulu" <bg> - just German (Germany) and English (USA). Oh, how wish I might get my old drop-diwn lostbox back ... Rainald (apologies for getting a bit off topic)Anonymous
August 30, 2010
You should see my QAT! http://i.imgur.com/X7eyt.pngAnonymous
August 30, 2010
Robert - you are a "power user" - that's amazing!Anonymous
October 28, 2014
This is PERFECT. Thank you SO very much. It makes my life much easier...the little things in business life...
