What if I want to add handwriting in OneNote?

person holding silver retractable pen in white ruled book

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a touch typist (tho not that fast) – if you type (at any speed) with one finger or more, then you can take notes. But there’s a lot of people who prefer ‘pen and paper’. Guess what – you can add handwriting in OneNote to your notes as well!

Touchscreen

The first question to ask, do you have a touchscreen?

Let me reassure you that this is not a requirement, there are options to still get hand written notes into your notebook, but it’s definitely the most direct route.

If you said yes, then let’s talk about what you can do.

Draw with Touch

I’d like to mention this first, because you don’t need anything ‘extra’ to draw – just a finger.

It’s a command in the Draw tab of the Ribbon.

As you can guess from the name, once you’ve clicked on it, one of the pens is selected and you draw.

Handwriting in OneNote includes drawing.
Drawing is simple in OneNote

You can just draw, or you can try out the Ink to Shape command.

Go on – give it a go. (It’s at the end of the Draw tab.)

Draw out your ideas, perhaps a process or to explain things. Whatever you want.

Handwriting

Note: The images are going to be real examples of my writing. Remember I’m a typist, so my handwriting is horrible! 😅

OK – yes you can write on the screen with a finger…

Handwriting in OneNote, using a finger will write, but it's large and messy.
Hello World

OK – it’s not pretty, it works, but…

Let’s be honest it’s quite large, and takes up a lot of space.

So the better option is to one one of the compatible ‘pens’.

I’ve completely misplaced my Surface Pen, that came with my device. Instead, it’s now been replaced with an alternative.

Note: If you’re interested this is the one I chose from Amazon.co.uk – RENAISSER Raphael 520C Stylus Pen for Surface

Using a stylus lets you hand write into your OneNote notebook - just as you would with a pen and paper.
Writing with a stylus pen

And it’s really as simple as that to add handwriting in OneNote. You might find it easier to have your touchscreen device portrait (just like a pad), rather than the normal landscape view.

Don’t know about you, but when I write my ‘lines’ always end up slopping down.

A simple way to make you more ‘efficient’ and keep straight is to display lines on the page – just like a ruled page.

I’ve give you a tip – View tab.

Add handwriting without a touchscreen

If you’ve got handwritten notes that you want in OneNote, you can add them in.

Take a picture of them, and insert the image into your notebook.

Voila – handwriting in OneNote, a simple (and effective) way to get your notes into the notebook especially if you don’t have a touchscreen.

Next Steps

I that this blog gets you started, but there is more about adding handwriting in OneNote. 😉

Interested in learning more about using OneNote? As it really is my favourite program – sign up to be notified when my OneNote course is available and perhaps get an early-bird price…

Related Posts

handwriting in OneNote, how to use OneNote efficiently, how to use OneNote tutorial

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2 thoughts on “What if I want to add handwriting in OneNote?”

  1. Paul

    Is “ink to text” still not reversible ? We had a few problems with colleagues handwriting the notes of a meeting, “ink to text” producing rubbish and us not being able to go back to the original handwritten notes.

    A lesson learned – “ink to text” a copy of your notes and not the original !

    Also worth bearing in mind that some features of OneNote are only available to paid subscribers – optical character recognition of scanned documents being an example !

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