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OneNote on SharePoint: A quick guide for site admins

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New Notebook in SharePointHosting your organization’s OneNote notebooks in a SharePoint document library offers the advantages of organizing them in one location, and the flexibility to decide who can access them by setting permissions. 

 

 

 

The job of creating a library and configuring permissions usually falls on the shoulders of the SharePoint site administrator. We will walk you through the steps required to perform the following tasks:  

  • Create a new OneNote document library
  • Manage permissions for the library
  • Manage permissions for individual notebooks in the library

Create a new OneNote Document Library

Your organization has numerous OneNote notebooks on many different topics:  budgets, inventory, product planning. They are scattered around the company, and people have a hard time tracking them down. You need a central place to store them, and decide a OneNote document library will do the trick.

1. On your SharePoint site, click the Site Actions dropdown, and select the New Document Library option.

2. On the Create dialog, enter a name and description for the document library. In the Document Template dropdown, select Microsoft OneNote 2010, and then click the Create button.

 

After SharePoint creates the Library, it will automatically open it so you can then set permissions.

Manage permissions for a document library

Some information in your notebooks is sensitive, so you don’t want just anyone to have access. You can restrict access, to give people varying levels of permission; for example, you give a select few the capability to update them.

Note: You can learn more about the SharePoint permission levels here.

1. Select the Library tab under Library Tools, and then click the Library Permissions button.

 

2. Click the Stop Inheriting Permissions button. This ensures that permissions set for the entire SharePoint site will not be applied to the library.

 

3. A dialog box lets you know that you’re about to create permissions for the library . Click OK to accept. 
 

 

4. To give access to particular people in your organization, click the Grant Permissions button.

 

5. On the Grant Permissions dialog, enter the names of the people you want to give access to. In this case, give them Design permissions, which lets them update and create new notebooks, but not grant permissions to others.

 
Those people can now create new OneNote notebooks within SharePoint or publish notebooks to the library.

They can also make changes to existing notebooks in the library by selecting to either Edit in Browser or Edit in Microsoft OneNote.

Note: In order to create a new notebook in SharePoint, users must have the OneNote desktop application installed on their computer.

Manage permissions for an individual notebook

You might want to restrict permissions even further to limit the number of people who can change a particular notebook. You can manage permissions on a single notebook in much the same manner as you do for the entire document library.

1. Point to the notebook you want to restrict access to, select the dropdown next to the notebook name, and then click Manage Permissions.  



2. Follow the same steps for setting permissions on Library, i.e. stop inheritance of permissions and grant permissions to particular individuals.

More Info

Tight Teamwork: OneNote on SharePoint
SharePoint Permission Levels

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