When it comes to putting shapes on your OneNote page, you have two choices, your shapes, or Microsoft’s. As with most Microsoft Office programs and O365 apps, you have the ability to insert shapes from a library. How many shapes you have to choose from varies by program. PowerPoint tends to have more options, since it is primarily a tool to create presentations. Since OneNote is primarily for notes, it has a decent selection as well. But if you can’t find the shape you want, you can just draw your own.

Outlook Auto Text. Using OneNote page as Outlook 'Auto Text'. Create or Reply Outlook message on pop up window, and put cursor inside the message at first. And then click this feature to send content of current OneNote page to the cursor of Outlook message.

Welcome to Day 8 of 365 Ideas for Office 365– Inserting Shapes and Inking Shapes. Yesterday we looked at the Draw tab in OneNote. Today we are zooming in on the Ink to Shape feature, and also Insert Shapes, since they are related.

OneNote 2016

1. Snap to Grid is always on in the app. Drawtab- Shapes in OneNote app OneNote online currently doesn’t support adding or drawing shapes, which hurts if you are on a Chromebook, but it helps with this post, since we only have to look at two versions! In fact, OneNote 2016 just has the ability to Insert shapes, not draw them.
2. Use the arrow at the left to pull out the paragraph (pretty far) until it disconnects from the previous paragraph (has its own 3 dot bar on top). Now use the 3 dot bar to bring it back and align it manually. Note that using no grid aligns the text similarly to grid size 2. You can only align to the other grid sizes if they are turned on.

This is what inserting shapes looks like under the Draw tab in OneNote 2016.

Here’s what it looks like to insert each of the shapes into a Notebook. Notice at the end that you can use Lock Drawing mode to draw the same shape over and over until you turn it off. You can also edit the color and thickness of the lines after creating them, and move them around and resize them.

Inserting Shapes in OneNote 2016

The app is verysimilar, without the Lock Drawing Mode. Snap to Grid is always on in the app.

Onenote For Mac Align Text To Grid Background

OneNoteonline currently doesn’t support adding or drawing shapes, which hurts if youare on a Chromebook, but it helps with this post, since we only have to look attwo versions!

in fact, OneNote 2016 just has the ability to Insert shapes, not draw them.

Microsoftannounced a while back that they are going to continue building up the featuresin the OneNote app, and not update OneNote 2016 anymore. That means tools that have only beenavailable in 2016 will be added to the app, and also that new tools will onlybe added to the app. Ink to Shape is oneof those newer features.

Here’swhat Ink to Shape looks like in action.

Drawing shapes in the OneNote app

So you can see that what Ink to Shape does isturn your inking into polygons (usually regular polygons) with straight sidesand equal corners. You can then click onit like any other object and resize it, with or without locking the ratios forthe sides, move them and group them.

OneNote- helping you and your students get back to the drawing board!

Onenote For Mac Align Text To Grid Page

Looking for more? How about the

Remote Learning with Microsoft Teams Course

Sign up to learn how to go from a complete novice in Teams to using Teams for your complete solution for remote learning.

If you like this style of directions and screenshots, walking you through ideas for using Microsoft tools in your classroom, check out my book,

All the Microsoft Tools You Need to Transform Your Classroom: 50 Ideas for using Microsoft Office 365 for Education available on amazon in both Kindle and paperback.