📝 Lesson 1.2: Accounts, Versions & Your First Notebook

The One Account You Need

Last lesson you decided why you're here. Now we clear the one small hurdle between you and a working notebook: an account. Think of it like a library card — it's free, it takes a minute to get, and it's what lets your notebook follow you from device to device.

There are two kinds of Microsoft account, and it's worth knowing which one you're using:

• A personal Microsoft account (free). This is the everyday account you'd use for Outlook.com, Hotmail, Xbox, or signing into Windows at home. If you have any of those, you already have one. Your notebooks are stored in your personal OneDrive. This is the path most home learners take, and it's completely free.
• A work or school account (Microsoft 365). This is the account your employer or school gives you, usually ending in your organization's domain. Notebooks are stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint, and admins may set rules about sharing. Use this one if your notes are for work or class and you want them tied into your organization's Teams and Office setup.

Which should you pick? If this notebook is for personal life, learning, or side projects, use a personal account — simplest and free. If it's primarily for your job or coursework and your organization uses Microsoft 365, use your work/school account so it plugs into Teams and Outlook. You can even have both signed in and keep separate notebooks. For this course, either works perfectly.

The Flavors of OneNote

OneNote comes in a few flavors. They all open the same notebooks — because the notebook lives in the cloud, not in any one app — so you're really just choosing your window into it. Here are the three that matter:

⚠️ Important Note: You may have heard of "OneNote for Windows 10," which used to be a separate app from the desktop "OneNote 2016." Microsoft has merged these into a single OneNote app on Windows. So if you're confused by old tutorials mentioning two Windows versions — don't be. Today there is just OneNote. Install that one.

How to choose: most people use the desktop app as their main home, the mobile app for capturing on the go, and the web version as a backup when they're on someone else's computer. You don't have to pick just one — sign the same account into all of them and they stay in sync. If you can't install anything (a work laptop, a library PC), the web version needs nothing but a browser and you can start this second.

Where Notebooks Live (and What Costs Money)

Here's the piece that makes "syncs everywhere" actually work. When you create a notebook, it isn't saved on your laptop the way a Word file is. It's saved in the cloud — in OneDrive — and every device you sign into simply shows you that same cloud notebook.

This is why there's no "Save" button and no "which copy is newest?" — there's only one notebook, in the cloud, and your devices are windows onto it. Personal accounts store notebooks in personal OneDrive; work/school accounts store them in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint.

What's free and what's paid?

Good news first: OneNote itself is free — the app, your notebooks, sync, sharing, search, and ink all cost nothing with a free Microsoft account. A few things sit behind a paid Microsoft 365 subscription or license:

• Extra OneDrive storage. Free accounts include a generous chunk of cloud storage; notebooks are small, but if you attach lots of big files you could eventually want more space.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot in OneNote. The AI helper that can summarize pages, draft text, and build to-do lists requires a paid plan — at the time of writing, a Microsoft 365 Copilot license on work/school accounts, or a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription at home. Lovely to have, not needed to learn OneNote.
• Some organization features (like advanced management in a work tenant) come with business 365 plans.

Walkthrough: Your First Notebook

Let's build it together. These steps are the same idea on every flavor; button labels may sit in slightly different spots, but the flow is identical everywhere.

Step 1 — Get into OneNote

Pick your window in: install the desktop app from onenote.com or your app store, or just open onenote.com/notebooks in a browser. Sign in with the Microsoft account you chose in Section 1.

Step 2 — Create a notebook

Look for Add Notebook (or + Notebook) — usually near your list of notebooks on the left. Give it a name. We'll use My Notebook for now (you can rename it anytime). OneNote creates it in your OneDrive automatically.

Step 3 — Add sections

A new notebook comes with one starter section. Rename it to 📥 Inbox (double-click its tab, or right-click → Rename), then add two more so you've got a real structure of three. Look for Add Section (or the + near the section tabs). You want these three — the emoji are optional but make tabs easy to spot:

• 📥 Inbox — where quick, unsorted captures land
• 📓 Journal — your learning-journal entries for this course
• 🎓 Course — notes and experiments from these lessons

Step 4 — Add and title a page

Click your 🎓 Course section, then Add Page. At the top of a blank page you'll see a title line — type a title there, like Why I'm Here. Notice the page appears in the page list on the side, named by whatever you typed. Titling pages is a small habit with a huge payoff: it's how future-you finds this in one search.

Step 5 — Paste in your first note

Click into the body of the page (remember — you can click anywhere) and paste or retype the "Why I'm Here" note you wrote last lesson. That's it: you now have a real notebook with your first note in it, saved to the cloud and synced to every device you sign into. Take a moment — that's a genuine milestone.

🎯 Project: Create "My Notebook"

Now do it for real, in the flavor of OneNote you'll actually use day to day. This is the notebook you'll grow across the whole course, so use a real one — not a throwaway.

Best Practices for Getting Set Up

✅ Do's

• Use one primary account for one notebook. Keep personal and work notes on their matching accounts — it saves confusion later.
• Sign the same account into every device you'll use, so sync just works.
• Name things clearly from the start. A titled page and sensible sections are gifts to future-you.

❌ Don'ts

• Don't create a throwaway "test" notebook. Build the real one now — you'll grow it all course long.
• Don't pay for anything yet. OneNote is free; skip upsell prompts unless you specifically want extra storage or Office apps.
• Don't over-plan your sections. Three is plenty to start. You'll reshape them naturally in Module 3.

📓 Learning Journal

📝 Lesson Summary

🎉 What You've Accomplished

You went from "I understand what OneNote is" to "I have a working notebook of my own, in the cloud, on my devices, with note #1 already written." That's the setup done — the finicky part is behind you. From here, it's all creating.

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

🔭 Looking Ahead

Next up — Lesson 1.3: The Interface & the Notebook–Section–Page Model — we take a guided tour of the OneNote window, learn every part of the screen, and go deep on the full hierarchy, including section groups and subpages, so you can shape a notebook that scales beautifully.

✅ Before the Next Lesson

• Make sure "My Notebook" exists with its three sections and your "Why I'm Here" page
• Sign into a second device (phone or web) at least once, to see sync in action
• Write your Lesson 1.2 Journal entry inside your 📓 Journal section

📚 Additional Resources

• onenote.com — download OneNote
• OneNote Help & Learning (Microsoft Support)
• Microsoft Support — What is a Microsoft account?