Keep Track of Your Memos and To-Do Lists by Emailing Them to OneNote

Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

I’ve always maintained that OneNote is Microsoft’s most under-rated product. Now, the recently untethered (from Office) and free (hallelujah!) app has added a capability that makes using it even better: You can email important notes directly to your OneNote notebooks.

To set it up, all you need to do is click through to Email Settings on OneNote.com and sign in with the Microsoft account that’s associated with the OneNote notebook you want to use. By default, you’ll see the email address you just signed in with. If you want to add more addresses, you’ll need to add them as aliases in your Outlook.com account. Hit save and you’re done.

To email notes into your default notebook, just send an email to [email protected] from any of the email addresses you just configured and watch the note appear as a new page in your Quick Notes section. It’ll work like this: The email subject becomes the title of the note, and whatever is in the body of the message becomes the note itself. If your email has graphics and rich text, those will all be preserved as well.

You can use this functionality to quickly email to-do lists directly into your OneNote notebook, for instance, or forward maps, itineraries, and flight tickets from your email to OneNote for your next vacation. Very, very handy.