Opening Teams OneNote from OneNote 2016 desktop app

[Anna Procházková]

Hi everyone.

we just came across the issue that users want to be able to open OneNote created in Teams directly from OneNote 2016 desktop app but when click on File -> Open and Company Sites, there are only OneNotes that a user recently opened (see the attachment). There is no possibility how to open any OneNote from a team that haven´t been opened through the app before.

Is there any way how to do that? Is this some kind of bug or is this desired behavior?

Thank you in advance!

Anna

[#2]

Hi@Anna Procházková ,

This used to be the case with the rest of the Office apps but they were updated. OneNote was not unfortunately in favour of the new Windows 10 app. 

Best way to give users access to the OneNote notebook in the SharePoint Site if they all need to use it is to add a OneNote Tab to the Team and the NoteBook will be in the list.  Saves having users to find the notebook. If they did then want to use the Desktop client it would then be in their list. 

Alternatively you could send them all the URL and get them to add it in the desktop client. 

Kind regards

Andy

[#3]

@Andrew Hodges Thank you for the answer!

However, even if a new OneNote is added into Teams (when creating a new tab) when opening a OneNote from OneNote app, it is not in the list of available notebooks unless the user has opened it recently. And that´s the problem - you cannot search for available notebooks from the desktop OneNote app. Or am I wrong?

[#4]

Hi @Anna Procházková ,

I have tested this and here is what I found:-

I created a new Team and added a OneNote Tab to the Team point to the OneNote notebook in that Team.  In OneNote 2016 the notebook appeared immediately in recent notebooks. 

The users will not see the notebook unless they visit the tab. I have also found a good user journey for them to get the notebook into their desktop client.

1. Open the Team.

2. Visit the OneNote Tab.

3. Click "Open in Browser". 

4. The drop down appears and select "Open in App". 

5. The Notebook opens. 

Hope that helps.

Andy

[#5]

@Andrew Hodges - This was the solution for the problem I had! Here's the background behind my issue: I used a personal outlook email to create a Teams Account and created a OneNote tab for one of the channels in Teams. I then tried to view and edit the notebook in the OneNote desktop app. I added the account to the OneNote desktop app for Win10, but never could see the notebook that was the default for the Team. Once I selected "open in app" from Teams, voila, now the notebook is visible in the desktop app.

Thanks for the help! 

(Hello Microsoft - It should not be this difficult).

[#6]

@Andrew Hodges 

Step 4 opens the Windows 10 app, not the OneNote desktop app.

I'd like to know if there's a way to open the full-featured OneNote desktop application from within MS Teams?

[#7]

@Andrew Hodges - I am also experiencing a similar issue that I would love assistance with. We recently created 50+ OneNote notebooks by adding them to the Teams Channels. If opened first in the Teams Channel, they will show up under "Recents" in the OneNote app. However, if the user hasn't opened the notebook before, it is unsearchable even though they have access.
Is there not a faster solution than asking every user to go and open 50 notebooks to gain access?