OK – let’s be real, at the end of the day the notes that you really want are the ones that you need. That leaves, well, everything else 😄. It’s really easy to add notes, but what about when you don’t want them? Then it’s time to delete in OneNote.
Edit Text
OK, I’m not going to belabour this point – we all know how to remove text.
Click next to, or select the text that you want to remove and press delete on the keyboard.
Quick Reminder: Delete removes characters to the right, while the Backspace removes to the left.
Deleting Content
There’s two options that you can use:
First, select the item (you’ll see the handles showing around the text, in the image below), and then delete.
However, you can also remove the entire ‘box’ that the content is in.
OneNote, everything is displayed in a ‘box’, it appears when the content is selected.
Remove the box, and everything in it, by clicking into the content (you can click on anything), then click on the grey bar to select the box.
Now press Delete.
The box and everything in it, is deleted.
Remove a Page
One step above the ‘box’ is the entire page.
Right-click on the page tab, and from the menu, click on Delete.
Delete a Section
As you did with a page, right-click on the section tab, and click Delete there.
Delete in OneNote – Notebooks
This has been made harder, on purpose, because once you delete a notebook you loose all of your notes inside it.
(I prefer to have my notebooks displayed on the left-side of the screen. If you have them in a drop-down list it’s the same commands.)
Right-click on the notebook.
Choose the last option – Close This Notebook
It is now removed from the list of available notebooks.
Note: If you made a mistake, you can re-open the notebook through File > Open.
To actually delete it, open File Explorer, find the Notebook in your drive and delete it.
Undo the Delete
We all know that there are times that we wish we hadn’t deleted that item.
OneNote has a built-in recycle bin…
For content on a page, use the Undo feature.
Both pages and sections are moved to the Recycle Bin, from there you can retrieve items and move them back into the main notebook.
Items left in the Recycle Bin for 60 days are automatically, permanently deleted.
Tip: If you’ve deleted something by accident, retrieve it immediately – while you’re thinking of it.
Next Steps
And there you have it, the various options for OneNote Delete.
Have I convinced you yet?
Interested in learning more about using OneNote? As it really is my favourite program – sign up to be notified when my OneNote tutorial course is available and perhaps get an early-bird price…
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