OneNote is an excellent note-taking application developed by Microsoft that helps you capture and organize your thoughts, but you can make it even better with add-ins, which are essentially extensions that add new features and capabilities to the base program. To help you get started, I’ve gathered the most useful OneNote add-ins that can elevate your note-taking experience to the next level.
Table of Contents
OneNote Web Clipper: For Web Content Collection
The first add-in I want to recommend isn’t actually an add-in in the true sense of the word, as it doesn’t extend OneNote itself but rather your web browser. However, I consider OneNote Web Clipper an absolute must-have for every OneNote user because it makes the note-taking app significantly more useful by bridging the gap between web research and note organization.
This extension lets you save any web content directly to OneNote with just a single click. You can save an entire webpage, clip just a specific section, or capture only the main article content while removing ads and other distracting elements. Once clipped, your content is accessible across all your devices, even offline, and you can easily annotate or edit it later in OneNote.
OneMore: For Numerous Quality-of-Life Features
OneMore is an open-source add-in that brings an extensive and constantly evolving collection of quality-of-life features to OneNote to address many of the application limitations. Like all other add-ins on this list, OneMore is completely free, though you can support its development through GitHub sponsorship if you find it valuable.
For example, you can use OneMore to add Excel-like formulas to tables, apply custom font styles beyond OneNote’s basic options, and even add syntax highlighting to code snippets. I personally love the Navigator window, which keeps track of your recently visited pages and maintains a personalized reading list. The ability to crop and rotate images directly within OneNote, without opening an external editor, is another time-saver that I use frequently.
Onetastic: For Hundreds of Useful Macros
Onetastic is in many ways a freemium alternative to OneMore, but it offers something unique that makes it worth exploring: macros. These are small automated workflows that can save you tons of time by performing repetitive tasks with just a few clicks.
Some of my favorite macros include the ability to create a table of contents for your notebook, insert monthly calendars, search and replace text across multiple pages, and sort pages by various criteria. You can download these macros from Macroland, Onetastic’s macro repository, or even create your own if you’re technically inclined. Just know that the free version allows you to download only up to 20 macros and execute them up to 500 times.
OneCalendar: For Calendar View
If you’ve decided to download Onetastic, you can skip this one since it’s included in that add-in. However, if you prefer a lighter solution, OneCalendar is available as a standalone tool that gives you a calendar-based view of your OneNote pages.
Basically, OneCalendar displays your pages based on when you created or last modified them. I relied extensively on this add-in when I was in college. With it, I could easily track down lecture notes from specific dates, review what I had worked on each week, and keep my study materials organized chronologically. You can view your notes by day, week, or month, and preview any page by hovering over its title.
OneNote Tagging Kit: For Powerful Tag Management
While OneNote’s built-in tags are useful for marking individual paragraphs, the open-source OneNote Tagging Kit takes things to the next level by letting you tag entire pages. You can then search based on your tags more effectively by combining tag-based and full-text searches to quickly find exactly what you’re looking for.
The good news is that installing this add-in won’t disrupt your existing OneNote workflow since all tagging operations run in the background, and the tags are compatible with regular OneNote paragraph tags. This means your tagged pages will still be accessible on other devices, even if they don’t have the Tagging Kit installed.
OneMark: For Markdown Support
If you’re a fan of Markdown formatting like I am, you’ll love OneMark. This add-in brings GitHub-flavored Markdown support to OneNote, complete with code block highlighting, LaTeX equations, and even table of contents generation.
You can easily toggle between Markdown source and formatted text, but you don’t really need to thanks to the live preview feature. Just hit Enter after typing your Markdown, and it instantly transforms into beautifully formatted text.
reMarkableSync: For reMarkable Tablet Users
Are you an owner of a reMarkable tablet? Then you should install the reMarkableSync add-in and use it to import your handwritten notes directly into OneNote. The add-in automatically converts your notes to searchable text using MyScript’s handwriting recognition service – the same technology that powers reMarkable’s native text conversion.
The setup process requires a one-time configuration to link your reMarkable account and MyScript credentials (which gives you 2,000 free conversions per month), but once that’s done, it’s smooth sailing. You can browse and select any notebook from your reMarkable cloud storage, and the add-in will download all the pages, process the pen strokes, convert them to text, and create a new page in your current OneNote notebook.
With these OneNote add-ins, you can take notes like a pro. That said, OneNote is showing its age in many ways, and many other excellent alternatives are available, including multi-platform note-taking applications that support not just Windows but also Linux.
All images and screenshots by David Morelo.
