OneNote tip: setting the width of the default note container

One of our internal OneNote users sent an email last week asking to somehow set the width of a default note container on a new page. He only uses one machine and one monitor and therefore the size of the container can be set to always maximize his real estate. He wanted to know if there was a way to make this subtle change to the default "New Page" command in OneNote.

The "default" container is somewhat small, but resizes automatically when you add content. Be sure you have Options | Display | Show Note Containers on Page checked ON.

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And notice how the container grows as you type in it, but it reaches a width that allows for a little room on the right:

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And he wanted that little piece of real estate back.

I like little challenges like this since it really forces me to dive into the product to explore how it really can be stretched.

I thought back to making images appear in an outline or on the page surface, and how I used a template to change that behavior. After a little noodling around, here's the reply I sent:

Yes there is a way to do this if you are using OneNote 2010.  Essentially, you can create a template for this.

Follow the directions here:

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnguin/archive/2010/11/22/tweaking-onenote-2010-to-change-scanning-image-insertion-behavior.aspx

but add step 3a – after resizing the container to the width you want, hit enter to create a second line, then up arrow to put the IP back to the first line.

Then finish saving the new page as a template.

This was kind of nice to research and answer since I was able to re-use an old blog entry.

If you are running into screen real estate limits, this may be worth a little investigation for you. I hope it helps!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John