Password-protect your notes in OneNote 2010
Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by OneNote in Help Articles
Password protection in Microsoft OneNote 2010 is designed to help keep your notes safe from prying eyes. Whether you use OneNote for class notes at school, for meeting notes at work, or for storing personal information at home, passwords play a crucial part in controlling access to those notes.
The most common scenarios for using passwords to help control access to the information in your notebooks include the following:
Personal privacy Your notebook may include a dedicated section or folder that contains personal data, such as your home address, telephone numbers, Social Security number, bank and credit card account numbers, Web site login credentials, and similar information. In this age of rising identity theft, leaving this type of information unprotected is risky business. OneNote encrypts protected notebook sections to help keep your personal information secure.
Flexible security If you use OneNote to document your life at school, at work, and at home, you’re likely to set up separate sections for each. Depending on how you want to share such information with others, you can assign different passwords to different sections.
Secured mobility Unlike a computer password, which controls access to your computer but doesn’t protect the individual files stored on it, a OneNote section password remains with your notebook file. It helps secure sections of your notebook even if your notebook file is copied to another computer or a file server, or if your computer is lost or stolen.
Apply a password to a section
To help prevent unauthorized access to your notes, you can apply a password to specific sections of your notebook.
- Right-click the tab of any section in your notebook that you want to protect with a password, and then click Password Protect this Section on the shortcut menu.
- In the Password Protection task pane, click Set Password.
- In the Password Protection dialog box, type the password you want in the Enter password box.
- Confirm the password by typing it in the Confirm password box, and then click OK.
Important OneNote uses encryption to secure notebook sections with a password. It is critical that you remember your password. If you forget your password, Microsoft cannot help you retrieve it. If you think you may forget your password, write it down at the time you apply it to a section. If you must write down a password to remember it, be sure to store it in a secure place.
When you work in a password-protected section in your notebook, it remains unlocked for a period of time that you can specify. To increase security, you can set the option to lock protected sections as soon as you navigate away from them or when you close OneNote. When a protected section is locked, the correct password is required to view and edit the section. You can easily change or remove the password for sections in your notebook.
Notes & Tips
- Use strong passwords that combine uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Weak passwords don’t mix these elements.
- Example of a strong password: Y6dh!et5. Example of a weak password: House27. Passwords should be 8 or more characters in length. A password that uses 14 or more characters is better.
- Passwords can be applied to individual sections only, not to entire notebooks.
- Passwords are case-sensitive. Make sure that the CAPS LOCK key is turned off when you enter a password.
- Access to sections with passwords is restricted after a period of inactivity or after you exit OneNote. You can modify these settings by clicking Password Options at the bottom of the Password Protection task pane.
- Password-protected sections are not included in notebook searches. To include a protected section in a notebook search, you must unlock the section before you begin to search your notes.
- Note tags used on the pages within a protected section are not included in a note tag summary unless the sections are first unlocked.
Change the password for a section
If a password for any section in your notebook has been compromised, or if you want to periodically modify a password for extra security, you can easily change the existing password for any section in your notebook.
- Right-click the tab of the section whose password you want to change, and then click Password Protect this Section on the shortcut menu.
- In the Password Protection task pane, click Change Password.
If this option is unavailable, no password is currently applied to the selected section.
- In the Change Password dialog box, type the current password in the Old Password box.
- Type the new password that you want in the Enter New Password box.
- Confirm the password by typing it in the Confirm Password box, and then click OK.
Remove the password from a section
- Right-click the tab of the section whose password you want to remove, and then click Password Protect this Section on the shortcut menu.
- In the Password Protection task pane, click Remove Password.
If this option is unavailable, no password is currently applied to the selected section.
- In the Remove Password dialog box, type the current password, and then click OK.
Lock all password-protected sections at once
You can simultaneously lock all password-protected sections in your current notebook.
- Right-click the tab of any section in the notebook whose password-protected sections you want to lock, and then click Password Protect this Section on the shortcut menu.
- In the Password Protection task pane, click Lock All.
Tip To quickly lock all password-protected sections in the current notebook, press CTRL+ALT+L. For similar shortcuts, see Keyboard Shortcuts for OneNote 2010.
Set password protection options
When you unlock password-protected sections in your notebook, OneNote keeps these sections available for a period of time before locking them again. You can specify that period of time, and you can set custom options for password protection.
- On the File menu, click Options.
- In the OneNote Options dialog box that appears, click Advanced.
- In the right column, scroll down to the Passwords heading, and then do any of the following:
- To lock notebook sections after a specified amount of time, select the Lock password-protected sections after I have not worked in them for the following amount of time check box, and then select the amount of time that you want.
- To lock notebook sections immediately after you’re done working in them, select the Lock password-protected sections as soon as I navigate away from them check box.
- To make notes in password-protected sections temporarily available to other programs, select the Enable add-on programs to access password-protected sections when they are unlocked check box.
Bob Koh
18. Aug, 2010
Hear hear!! Please allow the option to UNLOCK ALL!
Jack
13. Aug, 2010
Delay putting together next years business budget meant I had acouple of hours to understand the principals of OneNote….Excellent, a really well thought out piece of software. I only would have wished there were more sample pages to view. Now I have task to help my planning team get used to it……Any suggestions
Camron Shahan
04. May, 2010
Im obliged for the article. Really thank you! Great!
SFink
24. Mar, 2010
Can a onenote password protected on the desktop be synced with windows mobile 6.5 opened on the smartphone?
Phil
02. Mar, 2010
Need to be able to password protect a notebook.
pavithra
15. Feb, 2010
happy
Clinton Parker
13. Feb, 2010
Have a request for a feature – Protect a page or section from being edited without a password. So the page or section may be viewed but be write protected in some way. I have seen an attempt as an add-in but found it somewhat hit and miss.
Another option is to protect a copy of a file which has been inserted from accidentally being deleted.
Enjoying the product – use OneNote all day, every day in my work and want to use 2010 at work but cannot afford to have any errors? When should I trust it at work?
DB
17. Jan, 2010
Why can’t there be a security question and answer box in case I forget my password when i password protect a section?
Bradley
02. Jan, 2010
Is it possible to password protect an entire notebook? From a quick search it doesn’t look like it is possible. Is password protection of a notebook in the works?
Michael C. Oldenburg [MSFT]
09. Jan, 2010
No, this is not possible. We get this request a lot (I myself have asked for it), but there are several technical reasons why this is problematic to implement.
CK
02. Jan, 2010
Is there a way to unlock *all* locked sections at once? I hate typing passwords over and over. If not, this would be something I would love to see in a future version.
Michael C. Oldenburg [MSFT]
09. Jan, 2010
You can lock all sections at once for instant security (see File > Options > Advanced) but protected sections still have to be unlocked individually.
Brian Jensen
10. Aug, 2010
I echo CK’s comment, because the search function won’t look in locked sections, it would be great to have an ability to unlock all. I’m ok with having to type my many password if notebook passwords isn’t a feasible feature. I’ve found myself stoping with the password protection when I know I should because of the potential loss at using the search function.
And to reiterate the others, OneNote is the reason I converted back from my mac to the PC. OneNote, next to outlook would be one of the most important software applications that exist in my opinion. From schoolwork to business environment, it’s critical. This is something that every kid should be learning starting with the 1st grade. Amazing software (and thanks a million for the online version so I can share with others).
Can’t say enough how awesome the app is…
nigel robinson
27. Dec, 2009
at last i find help files which really do help. onenote seems to be a very useful application so i intend to learn how to use it more effectively. i would greatly appreciate a tutorial for it.
Michael C. Oldenburg [MSFT]
09. Jan, 2010
Nigel, it’s comments like yours that make our work worthwhile. Thank you for taking the time to leave positive feedback. We’re definitely planning some tutorials and training for the new version, so please check back soon. Meanwhile, thanks again for giving the OneNote Beta a try and posting feedback about our site. :)
chodorowicz
10. Dec, 2009
it’s offtopic but still quite important: have you noticed a bug that causes links not to be indexed (or even any text that goes after a link in the same line); i cannot find link through a search bar in OneNote 2010. besides that, I must say it’s amazing piece of software!
Michael C. Oldenburg [MSFT]
09. Jan, 2010
I haven’t heard of this issue before. If you can confirm that it’s an issue in the OneNote 2010 Beta, please post some additional information and I can pass it on to the product team. Thanks for giving the Beta a try. Glad to hear you like it so far!
Jakub Chodorowicz
12. Jan, 2010
OK, so this behaviour is a bit chaotic but I still get this problem with some link – I’ll post here a screenshot and description.
I have a page with link which has text “musicbrainz” in bot “text to display” and “address” attribute. When I’m on this page and I search for this term it gets highlighted on the page but it’s not listed in the results – screenshot:
http://imgur.com/aL2LZ.png
If I look for it from other pages/sections it’s the same:
http://imgur.com/944al.png
When the page is simpler it seems to work.. so it seems that in some more complicated page layouts (more text boxes) not all text is indexed (screenshot)
http://imgur.com/ZqXF2.png
Many thanks for the interest :)