I used to think setting up OneNote meeting notes had to involve some typing before the useful part could even begin – the subject, the date, who was on the call. Turns out I was making it far harder than it needed to be. There’s one command that fills all of that in for you, and once you know it’s there, OneNote meeting notes go from a small chore to something that genuinely takes seconds.
How do I stop typing out the same meeting details every time?
There’s a command “hidden in plain sight” on the Home tab in OneNote called Meeting Details, and it’s one of my favourite little time-savers. Click it, and OneNote asks Outlook for your meetings on that day. While it defaults to ‘today’, the handy date picker let’s you select past and future dates.
Pick the meeting you’re prepping for, and it pulls in the subject (as your page title), the date, the time, and even a link back to the original Outlook invite. It’ll list the attendees too, with tick boxes so you can mark who actually turned up.
If you use more than one email account, just check which calendar it’s pulling from first – it defaults to one of them, and it might not be the one you expect.
The bit that catches people out when you move rooms
Here’s a useful quirk I discovered the hard way. If you set your laptop up in one place, then disconnect and move somewhere else for the actual meeting – a different desk, a meeting room, wherever – OneNote often needs a moment (aka, a reboot) to reorientate itself to the new screen setup.
My workaround: create the page and pull in the meeting details before you leave your usual spot, not after you arrive. That way everything’s already sitting there waiting for you, and you’re not fighting with OneNote mid-meeting.
What if I want to jot down thoughts before the meeting even starts?
Totally doable, and I do this a lot. I create the page ahead of time as usual, then type my prep notes – questions I want to raise, things to check, timings – off to the (right) side of the page, in its own text area.
That way, when the meeting starts, the space under Notes stays reserved for what actually happens during the call, and my “before” thoughts don’t get muddled in with them.
Getting more out of your notes with tags
Once you’ve actually got notes down, tags are where things get properly useful. They live on the Home tab too, and they let you mark up specific lines – a To Do, a question, something to follow up on – without inventing your own shorthand.
The To Do tag is probably the one you’ll use most. It adds a little circle you can tick off once it’s done, right there in your notes. You can also stack more than one tag onto a single line if it needs it. Though the spacing can look a bit odd when you do.
There’s also a Find Tags command that pulls together every tagged item across your notebook (or wider, if you want) into one searchable list. Every entry’s a hyperlink, so it doubles as a way to jump straight back to that bit of the page.
Is Meeting Details available if I use OneNote on the web rather than desktop?
Yes, though it’s in a slightly different place. Instead of the Home tab, you’ll find it under Insert. Click it and you get the same panel on the right-hand side, letting you pick your date and meeting as before.
One difference worth knowing: on the web you’ll only see meetings from the single account you’re signed into. Not multiple calendars the way desktop can show you.
Written with the help of Claude AI, from an original transcript
YouTube Videos
What Is OneNote? The Simple Structure That Makes It Click
How to Add Content to OneNote (Typing, Copy & Paste and More)
Set Up Meeting Notes in OneNote in 3 Clicks (Then Track Follow-Ups With Tags)
How to Create OneNote Templates (and Save Your Own) (Sept 22)
How to Search in OneNote — The One Feature That Makes It Worth Using (Sept 29)
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