Onenote has an easy-to-use tag system that let you categorize your notes. You can tag anything from single lines of text to entire paragraphs. You can even create your own custom tags.
For me, the two tags I use most often are a custom “DM Narration” tag (which adds a speech bubble icon next to the tagged text, making for a nice visual reminder that the paragraph is meant to be read aloud), along with the default “To Do” tag (which acts as a check box that lets me keep track of what players have explored or cleared).
Above. Area 19: Gravity Ring shows both the Narration Tag and the To Do Tag being used.
But you can go even further than me by creating custom tags for all sorts of things such as encounters, traps, treasure, NPCs, (and anything else you want). The Tags Summary panel will then show you a list of all tags that exist on a page or section tab. This automated list of tags will give you a quick look at a location so that you know exactly what monsters, NPCs, and more are present on the page.
For more information on tags, see:
- Creating Tags. https://www.onenotegem.com/document/how-to-create-and-customize-tag-in-onenote
- Applying Tags. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/apply-a-tag-to-a-note-in-onenote-908c7b92-6ed0-498d-bc7d-1b44e6827d05?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
- Search for Tagged Notes. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/search-for-tagged-notes-in-onenote-7077a645-65ed-498f-ad94-61d6274efe79
Hey,
I was wondering how you add the peach background to your narration text? I can get the tag by it but I can’t figure out how to add the background without just highlighting it which doesn’t seem to be what you’re doing there.
Thanks
That is table shading (the narration block is inside a single-celled table).
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/add-or-remove-shading-in-a-table-62580400-ad23-484b-8ee0-8e6df730e51e
I use table shading a lot, so I have it pinned to my quick access bar.
If you’re using the Windows 10 uwp app version of Onenote rather than the 2016 desktop version, I think they literally just rolled out an update within the last day or two to add in missing table features, and this update should have shading if the previous version did not.
I wanted to ask, is there a way to choose different icons for the symbols? It’s not covered on the article (or at least I can’t find it) I thought you had custom images for your tags in the pictures but I haven’t been able to figure out how
You can choose from a pretty limited built-in selection of symbols. The custom ones I use (swords, skulls, etc) are actually just Emoji, which you can either paste into the tag’s name or whatever text is getting tagged.
Hi, a questions if I may, regarding your last picture of this post, the one at the Cragmaw Castle : on a few areas you have 2 tags at the same time. Goblin blind has an encounter tag (swords at the end) and a to do tag at the beginning. I managed to get them both myself, but I cannot get them to appear one at the beginning, and one at the end like you do. They both appear at the beginning one after the other and cannot be separated…
Hello.
In this case, the “Goblin Blind” header isn’t actually tagged, it just has an emoji at the end. If the outline were expanded to reveal the full description of Area 02, the contents include an encounter block (which is what is actually tagged via Onenote).
You can see this demonstrated in the Kennel for Area 03.
In my later revisions, I dropped the use of emoji in the main headers as the blue text portion is enough to tell me if there is a potential encounter in the area.