Windows – Open OneNote quick notes automatically on startup

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I use Windows+N to create OneNote Quick Notes on a regular basis, to create little to-do lists or other one-off notes, such that I often have a few open on my desktop. Is there a way to have OneNote automatically open all of those Quick Notes again on startup? i.e. if I have 5 Quick Note windows open on my desktop, and need to reboot, is there a way to get OneNote to open those 5 notes again when the computer restarts, without having to go in and manually open them one by one?

I'd expected this to be a common question, but to my surprise I didn't see anyone else asking it. If I'm wrong, and this is a duplicate, apologies in advance…

Best Answer

What you're asking for is not possible. OneNote doesn't have this as a feature. This leaves two primary ways to open a specific OneNote page (automatically):

  1. By opening a shortcut link file pointing to the specific page (easy).
  2. With a keyboard automation tool such as AutoHotkey (hard).

Regardless of which method you use, both require knowledge of the specific page you wish to open.

Your best option is to use the workaround described below to open the OneNote Section containing your notes. This would at least minimize the number of clicks required to get to the specific pages you're interested in.

You can accomplish this by saving shortcuts in your Startup folder as follows:

  1. In OneNote, right-click the page/section/notebook you want to open on startup and click Copy Link to Page

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  2. In Start, search for shell:startup to open your user Startup folder

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  3. Right-click on a blank part of the File Explorer window and click New then Shortcut

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  4. In the Type the location of the item: field paste the link to your page you copied to the Clipboard in step 1 then click Next.

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  5. Finish the wizard. The next time you log in your OneNote page will open automatically.

As an added bonus, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to the shortcuts icons you created in your Startup folder. This lets you quickly go to any location in OneNote regardless of where you are in Windows. To do this, right-click the shortcut file, choose Properties then select the Shortcut key field and press your desired key combination.

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