Managing your OneNote notebooks effectively is a key step to maintaining an organised and efficient file structure. Regularly reviewing and decluttering your notebooks can prevent having unused files and make it easier to find important information when you need it. Deleting notebooks that are no longer needed is a crucial part of this process.

There are two main locations that most OneNote notebooks are stored in: OneDrive, or your local computer. We’ll look at how to delete a notebook from either location.

Before you delete a notebook

Before you delete any OneNote notebook you should take a few steps to ensure you are not deleting important content.

• Open the notebook and look through the sections and pages it contains.
• Ensure you back up any important content or move the content into another notebook which you plan to keep.

Once you are happy that the remaining content is no longer needed, you can proceed to delete the notebook from your cloud storage or local drive. This not only frees up storage space but also reduces visual clutter, helping you focus on the notebooks that are currently relevant.

Delete a OneNote notebook

OneNote itself doesn’t provide a direct delete option within the application so you will need to navigate to the location the notebook is stored to delete it.

To delete a notebook from OneDrive:

1. Open a web browser and navigate to www.onedrive.com.
2. Login with your Microsoft 365 username and password.
3. Using the sidebar, select My files.

4. Navigate using the folders to the location of the OneNote notebook.
5. Place your cursor over the filename.
6. Click the ellipsis (…) button and choose Delete:

7. A message will appear to confirm you wish to delete the notebook:

8. Click Delete.
9. The notebook will be deleted.

The notebook will be moved to your OneDrive Recycle bin which you can restore from if needed.

To delete a notebook from the local computer:

1. Open the File Explorer (for PC) or Finder app (for Mac).
2. Navigate to the location the OneNote notebook is saved.
3. Right mouse click the file and choose Delete.
4. The notebook will be moved to the Recycle Bin.

OneNote Notebook still visible after deleting

One weird little phenomenon that sometimes happens with OneNote, happens after you have deleted a notebook. You open the OneNote app and the deleted notebook is still showing in the sidebar. How? you just deleted it…

One thing to bare in mind is that Notebooks are a little different to other file types such as Word documents, or Excel workbooks. When you close OneNote, your notebooks stay open and active in OneNote. This doesn’t happen in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. You can re-open OneNote at any time and any open notebooks are displayed in the sidebar on the left. You can physically close individual notebooks as needed to reduce the number of notebooks automatically displayed in the app but otherwise they remain open and accessible.

If you happen to delete a notebook which you had recently opened, you may find it still showing in the sidebar. So how do you fix it?

1. Open the OneNote app.
2. Click the File tab and choose Info.
3. The Info section will list all the notebooks you have open.
4. Find the notebook which you have deleted.
5. Click the Settings button and choose Close.
6. Use the back arrow to go back to the main OneNote screen.
7. The notebook will now be removed from the sidebar.

Deleting notebooks which are not in use or contain old information you no longer need is a good process to keep your cloud storage or local computer clean and tidy. It helps you find the important and up-to-date files much quicker. Comment below with any questions or check out more tips for using OneNote.