OneNote Default and Backup Locations

There was a new question out in the Social Answers area for OneNote today about the differences between default notebooks, unfiled notes, and backup locations. People have asked questions about the relation between these three for as long as I have used OneNote. I am hoping the following will help clear things up a bit.

The default notebook location is the folder you want to hold all new notebooks by default. For example, if you want to put your notebooks in a directory at the top level of your C drive, you would set it C:\OneNote2010.

The backup folder is where you want OneNote to put the automatic back up copies of your notes. OneNote runs this back up automatically on a schedule you can adjust. I would set that folder to be some drive and notebook combination that isn’t on your main drive. A back up on the same drive as the main content isn’t really a back up.

The Unfiled Notes section points to a section where you want to put things that don’t go anywhere else. In your case, you probably want to set it to the same folder as you are using for your default location. The difference here is that you are creating a section in that folder, not telling OneNote to put things in the folder.

While these three locations are distinctly different from each other, they work together to make your notes more usable and more secure. I strongly recommends you use the File–>Options–>Save and Backup screen to change the default locations and back up times to what you want. You can find the steps for changing the locations on the Symbaloo Office blog. I might even get the process for changing the backup timing there one of these days too