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How to password protect your OneNote notebooks

OneNote is an extremely versatile tool, and now it's free for everyone. Whether you use OneNote to take notes in class, stay on top of projects How to Use Microsoft OneNote for Project Management How to Use Microsoft OneNote for Project Management OneNote is the ideal collaboration tool for managing simple projects in small teams. And it is absolutely free. See how OneNote can help get your projects off the ground! Read More

Depending on your use for OneNote, you may be interested in keeping the contents of a notebook secure. Fortunately, OneNote includes the ability to password-protect certain sections of any notebook. Hopefully you're not saving your passwords in OneNote, since password managers are much more secure. Do you want to be sure? You need a password manager. This is how they work and how they keep you safe. Read More For anything else you want to keep sensitive, here's how to restrict access.

Open OneNote on your desktop and open the notebook you want to protect. Right-click on a section and choose Password protect this section... to launch the password sidebar. You can click Set password to choose a new password for the section, or Remove password to take it off if you've changed your mind.

You will be prompted to type the password twice as usual to add it, but be careful here. There is no way to recover your notebook data if you forget this password , so be sure to commit to memory or add it to your password manager. When setting this up, it's a good idea to review the password options as well.

Click Password Options... at the bottom of the sidebar to open them. Here you can change how long a section must be idle before it automatically locks, or set all sections to lock as soon as you leave them. You can press the shortcut CTRL + ALT + L at any time to immediately lock all password-protected sections.

Looking to dig deeper into OneNote? See Little-Known Features You'll Love 7 Little-Known OneNote Features You'll Love 7 Little-Known OneNote Features You'll Love OneNote is 100% free and packed with advanced features. Let's take a look at some of the ones you may have missed. If you're not already using OneNote, these may beat you to it. Read more.

Do you keep confidential OneNote documents? Let us know if you like using a password on your notebooks!