OneNote’s new ‘Pen Focused View’ now rolling out to Insiders, gets a deep dive
Fans of Microsoft’s OneNote will want to see this new full-screen mode made for inking.
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What you need to know
With thelaunchof the newSurface Pro 9today, Microsoft is also releasing its new ‘Pen Focused View’ for OneNote on Windows. And Pratik Das, Product Manager on the Office Natural User Interface team, gives an in-depth look at the new feature in thelatest blog post.
The tl:drof Pen Focused View is it is effectively a full-screen inking mode in OneNote.
Whereas OneNote is known chiefly for keyboard notetaking with the ability toaddink, it was never designed to be an “inking first” type experience. Instead, Microsoft has things likeWhiteboardandJournal, but neither is explicitly focused on notetakingper se.
Now, users can enter a full-page view with a simple toggle under the Drawing tab. Even more, the view is set by default when you open OneNote and your Surface Pen is undocked, e.g., double-click the top button. Of course, like all things, this feature is an option, and it can be disabled under Options > Advanced > Pen.
Even the Pen Toolbar can be hidden, giving a very full-screen effect.
Microsoft suggests this new feature can be used for jotting down “notes with your pen during a meeting, lecture, or training session,” “brainstorm a concept with ink,” and pasting “a screenshot and use ink to add ink annotations.”
One catch to this is Pen Focused View is only available to those enrolled in the Office Insider program, specifically the Beta channel. You’ll need Version 2210 (Build 15724.10000) or later to get the feature (the current Beta build is 2211). And even then, Microsoft remarks that not everyone gets the feature due to them “slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders.”
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Enrolling in the Office Insider Program is easy, especially withour quick guide, which explains everything.
Overall, this new OneNote feature seems especially useful for those who love to ink for taking notes but didn’t care for the compromised experience with OneNote.
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Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer,podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.
