How to Search for Text in Microsoft OneNote

Edited 3 months ago by ExtremeHow Editorial Team

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Microsoft OneNote is a great note-taking tool that helps you easily collect, organize, and share your notes. Over time, as you add more notes, it becomes important to quickly find specific information. Fortunately, OneNote has powerful search capabilities that allow you to quickly find text in your notes. This article provides a comprehensive guide on how to search for text in Microsoft OneNote. It aims to help both beginners and experienced users get the most out of OneNote's search functionality. Let's dive in.

Understanding Microsoft OneNote

Before getting into the search features, let's get a brief idea about Microsoft OneNote. OneNote is a digital note-taking application designed to help users capture thoughts, ideas, to-do lists, and more. It allows you to create notes that can include text, images, links, and other multimedia.

OneNote is organized in a way that mimics physical notebooks. It consists of notebooks, which contain sections, and each section contains pages. This hierarchical structure makes it easy to organize your notes just like a real notebook.

Why use the search feature?

Searching your notes manually can be time-consuming, especially if you have a large collection of notes. Using the search feature effectively saves time and increases productivity by quickly finding the information you need. It can search for specific words, phrases, tags, handwritten notes, and even text within images. Let's find out how you can perform these searches.

How to search for text

OneNote's search feature is both simple and efficient. Here's a step-by-step guide on how you can search for text:

Search in current page

To find text in the page you're working on:

1. Open the page where you want to search for text.
2. Press Ctrl + F (Cmd + F on a Mac) on your keyboard. This action will activate the search bar at the top of the page.
3. Type the word or phrase you're looking for in the search bar. As you start typing, OneNote highlights matches on the page in real time.

Example:

You want to search for the term "project plan" on the current page. Simply press Ctrl + F and enter "project plan" in the search bar. If it exists on the page, OneNote will highlight it for you.

Search in a section

To find text in a specific section of your notebook, follow these steps:

1. Go to the section you want to search in.
2. Click the search icon (magnifying glass) in the upper right corner or use the shortcut Ctrl + E (Cmd + E on a Mac) to bring up the global search interface.
3. Type the word or phrase you're looking for in the search box.
4. Select Search Section from the drop-down options to limit the search to the current section only.

Example:

In the "Meeting Notes" section, you need to search for mentions of "Q1 Results". Use the general search function (Ctrl + E), type "Q1 Results" and select "Search Section" from the options.

Search in notebook

If you're unsure which section contains the information you need, it's helpful to search throughout your notebook. Here's how:

1. Open OneNote and make sure the desired notebook is open.
2. Activate the Search pane by clicking the Search icon or using Ctrl + E.
3. Type your search terms in the search box.
4. Select Search Notebook from the options to limit your search to the current notebook.

Example:

If you are not sure where you saved the information on "Budget 2023", use the search function inside the notebook and select "Search Notebook".

Search everywhere (all notebooks)

This feature is perfect for when you don't remember which notebook contains the information you want:

1. Open Microsoft OneNote.
2. Press Ctrl + E to access the Search pane.
3. Enter your search query in the box.
4. Select Search All Notebooks from the options. This will search every open notebook in OneNote.

Example:

For a broader search, let's say you're looking for the phrase "holiday plans" and you can't remember which notebook it's in. Using the "Search All Notebooks" option will survey all of your notes to find it.

Advanced search options

OneNote has some additional search features that can be very useful:

Search Tags

OneNote allows you to tag important parts of your notes with various predefined tags such as Important, To-Do, Question, and Custom tags. Here's how to search specifically for these tags:

1. Open OneNote and press Ctrl + E to open the Search pane.
2. Instead of typing a word or phrase, click the drop-down arrow on the search pane.
3. Select Search Tags to find your tagged items.
4. You can also filter by tag type, date, and location.

Example:

If you've added to-do tags to tasks you've noted, you can quickly compile a list of these tasks using the "Find Tags" search.

Search handwritten notes

OneNote can recognize text in handwritten notes through its OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities. Follow these steps to find handwritten entries:

1. Confirm that the notebook with handwritten notes is open.
2. Use Ctrl + E to bring up the Search pane.
3. Write down the word or phrase you think is in the handwritten note.
4. OneNote will process the search in handwritten entries, and highlight any matches.

Example:

If you hand-wrote "sales strategy" in your notes, you can search for this phrase as if you typed it.

Search text in images

OneNote's OCR also allows it to search text within images. Here's how to perform such a search:

1. Add picture-reading material to your notebook.
2. Activate search with Ctrl + E.
3. Type the required text found in the image.
4. OneNote will scan all images and highlight the images containing the specified text.

Example:

Suppose you have screenshots with notes labeled "Annual Report." Type "annual report" to quickly find those images.

Search filters and suggestions

Several tips can improve your search process in OneNote:

• Use quotation marks for exact matches. Put your search query in double quotation marks to find results that match an exact phrase.
• Use lowercase for non-case-sensitive searches. OneNote searches are not case-sensitive, so lowercase is the standard.
• Take advantage of OneNote's list view of search results to easily navigate between items.
• If the search results are overwhelming, specify more specific search terms or use different search criteria.

Example:

Searching for "monthly meetings" in quotation marks will return only notes containing that phrase, and not results that contain just "monthly" or "meetings" separately.

Conclusion

Understanding how to efficiently use the search feature in Microsoft OneNote can transform the way you manage your notes and find information. Whether you're managing complex projects or tracking individual tasks, taking advantage of these search strategies can save significant time and effort. As you become more familiar with OneNote's interface, your ease of navigating and maximizing OneNote's potential will increase. Whether you're searching through typed text, tagged entries, or embedded multimedia, OneNote's search function provides a comprehensive toolset for quickly accessing the information you need.

We hope this guide has enhanced your understanding of the search functionalities available in Microsoft OneNote. With these tools, searching your notes can be an intuitive and powerful means of staying organized and informed.

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