How to move a OneNote Notebook to a shared location (Teams, Box, SharePoint, OneDrive)

Owned by Sandro Munoz (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jan 30, 2020 by Whiteley, Kathryn

Sharing OneNote notebooks through Teams is easy and allows for collaboration. OneNote Notebooks can also be shared via Box, SharePoint and OneDrive in order to enable collaboration.


On this page:


Using Teams for OneNote Notebook Collaboration

To add a new or existing OneNote notebook to a channel in Teams, click Add a tab Add button at the top of the channel and select OneNote. For detailed instructions, please see this Microsoft article, Add a OneNote notebook to Teams.

When you share a OneNote Notebook within Teams, permissions can get a little tricky. 

  • Since SharePoint is the backend for Teams file storage, a OneNote Notebook created from within Teams is stored on SharePoint.
  • SharePoint permissions can be edited directly within SharePoint. This means that permissions applied in the SharePoint backend for your notebook can include people that are not members of your team within Microsoft Teams.
  • If a user is granted access to a notebook directly in SharePoint, removing the user from the team or private channel won't remove the user's access to the notebook. You would have to go to SharePoint to revoke those permissions.
  • If an existing notebook is added as a tab to a channel, access to the notebook and access to the channel isn't changed. This means the following:
  • Not everyone in the channel will have access to the notebook by default. This is because they may not have access to where the notebook is hosted, such as another team's SharePoint site.
  • Users who are not members of the Team (or private channel, as the case may be) can view the notebook.

Moving your OneNote Notebook to Box, OneDrive, or SharePoint 

Step-by-step guide


  1. Open OneNote and click the File tab.
  2. Select the locally saved notebook you'd like to move to a shared file location and then click Settings → Properties.



  3. In the notebook properties, click Change Location...
  4. Navigate to a shared directory/folder where you'd like to store your notebook (e.g. Box, SharePoint, OneDrive).  It's recommended you keep them in a folder called OneNote Notebooks.  For Box, you must have Box Sync installed and your OneNotes folder synced to save your file.
  5. Once you'd selected the new location and saved the notebook, you'll get a message letting you know the notebook is now syncing.



  6. When you go back to the notebook properties, you'll now see a sync button and the location of the notebook will be different.




Your OneNote notebook is now syncing to the shared location, and changes you make to the notebook locally will be synced to the version stored in the shared file location.  The notebook will also now be accessible via OneNote Online and can be shared with others.