Setting the A4 page size in OneNote

Let's take a break from testing Equation support in OneNote 2010 to let me respond to everyone with a tip that is bubbling up.

I can't really understand why, but over the past two weeks I have received a handful of emails about changing the page size in OneNote and had at least one face to face conversation about the same thing. Then I saw this question on the discussion group and figured I would broadcast the solution more widely. The odd bit about this is that all but one request wanted A4 page sizing.

In general, though, what some users want is to set a page size (of paper) to be the page OneNote shows in the UI. I can understand this pretty well. The default page size for OneNote is infinite in any direction. This lets the page "keep growing" so you can add information to it without running out of room. This is handy when you are quickly taking notes and just need more space automatically so you can keep taking notes. It doesn't help me when I am trying to visualize what my jumble of notes, ink, images and such will look like if printed.

To change the size, though, can be done very easily. A scenario for this is to change to size of paper you will use for printing to get a feel for how the page will look when printed. The specific questions I have received have centered on the A4 paper size for what that's worth.

To change the size of the current page, click File | Page Setup (in OneNote 2007) and the Page Setup task pane will open. "Task Pane" is the lingo we use for the column that gets added to let you change these settings. At the top of the pane you can change the size to A4, like this:

I circled a link at the bottom of the pane which may be handy. If you change the page size and want to use the current page to be the default, you can click this link, give the template a name and set it to be the default template to use for new pages in this section. If you do this on a blank page, you will get a new, blank, A4 sized page each time you create a new page in this seciton.

This all leads to an interesting test case. Suppose you have text that is too large for the new page size, or you keep adding text and going outside the page boundary. Does OneNote block you from adding more text? That would seem counter to the goal OneNote has of easily letting you take notes. Keeping that goal in mind, it would seem that OneNote should NOT block you from adding notes "outside the page boundary," and indeed that is the behavior. Here's what it looks like on my machine:

The white part is the page, and the gray is the area that is not part of the A4 page. Play around with it - make a page in Unfiled Notes and change the page size around to verify the behavior yourself.

And now you should be able to make a reasonable guess about pasting an 8x10 image on an Index Card size page. Go ahead and test this scenario and verify your assumption!

The last question I am puzzling over is why so many comments about the A4 page size just got came up...

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2009
  I recently discovered the option to change the document size in ON, but was bummed to discover ON only gives you one sheet per "page".  It would be SO SO helpful to have the document size outlined in black and have extra space around it in case you run outside the space while working. It would also make my day if there was an option to have more than one piece of formatted paper per ON "page".  I make mega tables to organize my notes and reformatting them to print is a major project.  Will this be fixed in 2010 or is a powertoy in the works?Thanks!!

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2009
  Not sure I follow you.  It seems like you could set the page size to 8.5 x 11 (or whatever your printer uses) and apply that as a template.  that would let you see a good approximation of the print area.  But it also sounds like you've seen this and it's not working.  Can you describe a little better what you are thinking?  You could even make a little movie and send it to me - there is a pretty simple tool at http://communityclips.officelabs.com/ if you don't have one.  My email link is in the upper right.

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 01, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 01, 2009
  I think I understand now.  WIN+N opens a new note in the Unfiled Notes but bypasses the template settings.  So if you apply a template to Unfiled Notes, it gets bypassed by WIN+N, but does get applied if I open the section and create a page.  Is this what you mean?

• Anonymous
  October 06, 2009
  hmmm, not quite.I very much like the way Onenote handles unlimted screen size, so that I can draw what I want and how big I want it.So in the page setup I have set the size to automatic (as it was after installation, which I did not do myself).Regardless of section or unfiled notes, when it comes down to printing, I want Onenote to use A4 paper. Somehow Onenote always uses Letter for printing, and I do not know how to change this 'default' behaviour to A4.(Some of the following button / menue names will not be correct as translated form German)Therefore everytime I want to print something I need to use the printer popup (file, print), click settings, click further options. There I am shown the size set to Letter and I can change the size to A4.Oddly when I do the same in the properties of the printer queue it comes up with A4.

• Anonymous
  October 12, 2009
  I think that what is needed (from a comment above) is the ability to have a OneNote "Page" be set up as an infinitely long letter (or legal, 14, etc.) physical page so that it can be printed or PDF'ed as needed. I constantly lose time by needing to resize my notes to be within the width of a standard printer.  

• Anonymous
  October 21, 2009
  I'll pass that idea along.  Thanks for the succint summation!

• Anonymous
  October 21, 2009
  I found a solution to my issue.I have two printers:Printer A a PDF converterPrinter B a laser printerPrinter A has letter as the default page sizePrinter A also was the default Windows printerPrinter B has A4 as the default page sizeNow when I wanted to print in OneNote and changed from the default Printer A to Printer B the page size Letter was kept.I have change the default printer to B and now all is OK.

• Anonymous
  November 19, 2009
  I'm relatively new to OneNote and I like it in general, but I've been running into some issues lately.First off, page setup doesn't really work like it should. I usually set my paper size to letter and all print margins to 1" but once it's printed out, the right margin is always greater than the left. That is, there's always more space on the right side.Also, like someone mentioned before me, it would make things so much easier if you could add writing space (a blank page) after specifying page size. Having to make multiple subpages just because there's only one page allowed is just a pain.

• Anonymous
  November 19, 2009
  For the first point, this may seem odd, but can you photograph or scan a printout so I can see exactly what you see?  And what type of printer do you have?  You can email this to me - the link is in the upper right, and I'll reply so you can get my email address.I'll pass the other feedback to our designers.  Thanks!

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2010
  I am looking for what seems a simple solution, but cannot find it - maybe it doesn't exist.When I open a new notebook or section in ON 2007 the default page size is 'auto' and I have to set up a new page template every time.How can I set it so that the default is A4 Portrait width as this is the size that I wish to use?

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2010
  Obviously I didn't explain myself very well; what you suggest is what I am currently doing every time I create a new notebook, or a new section - what I want is to have the default do it for me instead of having a whole series of identical templates, one for each section, or notebook.

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2010
  Hi, just discovered your blog and enjoying the tips. I'll ask something here that I asked on the community page but didn't get a reply.When printing ON pages must each page go on a new sheet of paper or can you get multiple ON pages to a physical page? It would be a terrible shame if the former as often you have a collection of notes on different ON pages or journal entries and there would be an awful lot of paper with blank parts for just a small bit of writing.Thanks

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2010
  It would appear that I'm not the only one looking for a way to constrain the width of ON pages - this explains what I'm after better than I do.http://www.technologyquestions.com/technology/microsoft-onenote/232095-locking-page-width-but-not-height.html

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2010
  Unfortunately, there is not a way to lock the page width but leave the height infinite.  I'll pass this along as a request to our designers, though.

• Anonymous
  July 14, 2010
  My difficulty is that I'm a teacher (math); who uses one note for class notes; and then post them online.  However using the auto feature (at least during class) makes a lot of sense. However when I go to post it on the web, some of my problems can be on two different pages (like continues on).  Is there a way to set it so its a letter size; but add a page directly underneath when you run out of room - so you can chose to go to the next page?

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2010
  Hi I have been using ON since 2003 on tablets and am a great fan.However I would very much like to stop having to set the default template each time I create a new section.Can someone tell me how I set my saved custom page template for all new sections ?

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2010
  templates have to be set per section.  I'll forward this along as feedback for a new feature - you want to apply a template to a whole notebook, not just a section.

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2010
  hi,is there a way taht one-note will beahve like word. i mean that when i go outtside of bunderres(A4 page size) it will atumaticlley start new page?

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2010
  No, sorry.  This layout exists just to help see what will print.

• Anonymous
  December 18, 2010
  Hi!I'm using ON 2010 on my tablet and i have one very annoying problem.I write my homework on A4 template, when i switch to another page and come backpart of the writing scrambled and goes outside of the boundaries.I write mostly math. I switched off snap to grid, and made A4 a default template.I would be very grateful for your help :)

• Anonymous
  December 19, 2010
  Did you install the patch to help with ink shifting?Links are here: blogs.msdn.com/.../ink-shifting-patch-released-today.aspx

• Anonymous
  February 23, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 24, 2011
  I don't think there is anything else you can do.  If you want, can you email me the page that you are using (the email link is in the upper right, you have to wait for my reply) and I can check to see if the page is causing this.  But I think you have hit the limit of our printing...

• Anonymous
  May 12, 2011
  Is there a way to apply the A4 page setting to pre existing pages in 2010? It seems that once you set templates you can only apply them to new pages.

• Anonymous
  May 12, 2011
  No easy way to do that.  It would be a minor task to convert my page expander toy to make page size A4: blogs.msdn.com/.../a-powertoy-to-make-using-adapx-pens-for-onenote-a-little-easier-for-me.aspxBut other than that you will need to change the page size on each page.

• Anonymous
  May 24, 2013
  I am attempting to alter a .Doc (word) into an Image (.jpg, etc.)I am attempting to print it to Onenote and then send it back to Word.the process should save each page as an individual images.Which i can then save from the word interface into individual image files. See link below.Only problem i am having is that Onenote automatically loads in Portrait orientation and no matter what I do (save as template, etc.) it defaults to Portrait.How can I change the default orientation or have it accept a page in Landscape orientation?Thankswww.wikihow.com/Change-a-Word-Document-to-JPEG-Format

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2013
  When you print to OneNote you should see a "Preferences" button on the Choose Printer dialog.  Click it and the (only) option on the Preferences page is portrait or landscape.  Does this help?

• Anonymous
  December 20, 2013
  Thanks for sharing this ..But how to have unlimited page length .. like some webpages?

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2013
  Hi Ayman,Once you change the width, you have to change the height as well.  There is no capability for fixed width and infinite height.  I've heard this request before so i will let the design team know.

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2014
  The beste solution would be to be able to out New A4 Pages directly und er the the lage linke in journal

• Anonymous
  September 26, 2014
  I don't see why you are surprised about people wanting the size A4 since it's the most common papersize used in the civilized part of the world.

• Anonymous
  September 27, 2014
  Right - got it, Fil.  My phrasing was poor.  I meant to say that I did not understand why I got all the emails about paper size all at once.  I would have expected a more steady flow rather than all of a sudden having several folks contacting me all at the same time.

• Anonymous
  November 30, 2014
  It became a concern of mine when I e-mailed it.  I often e-mail just sections or pages to myself or students, but when opened in Outlook they are huge.  

• Anonymous
  March 30, 2015
  Hey John,do you know if the team made any neu progresses?

• Anonymous
  April 23, 2015
  where On the screen are the page size settings?

• Anonymous
  May 17, 2015
  I know this is gonna sound like a really dumb question but I dont feel like reading at the time. Is this the format to make one note into a word document? To have everything fit and look like how it is on the one note to a word doc? Pls let me know ha.

• Anonymous
  January 20, 2016
  Hey vote here for this idea to be added to OneNote: onenote.uservoice.com/.../6441281-multiple-pages-within-a-given-paper-size