How to send emails from Outlook to OneNote?

In today's fast-paced work environment, it's often necessary to retain important emails—such as instructions, meeting summaries, or critical notices—so you can easily reference or organize them later. One highly effective way to achieve this is by sending emails directly from Outlook to OneNote. By doing so, you can archive, annotate, and categorize messages within OneNote's organized notebooks, making your information always available, searchable, and well-structured for future use. Whether you're gathering project emails, keeping track of correspondence, or simply storing information for review, integrating Outlook and OneNote streamlines the process and enhances your productivity. This article provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to send emails from Outlook to OneNote, explores various methods—including automation via VBA—and offers practical tips, troubleshooting advice, and alternative approaches for different user needs and scenarios.

• Send emails from Outlook to OneNote
• VBA Code - Automate sending selected or filtered Outlook emails to specific sections in OneNote

Send emails from Outlook to OneNote

In Outlook, Microsoft provides a built-in feature that enables you to send emails directly to OneNote for archiving and organization. This option is particularly useful for users who want to capture actionable information or maintain a digital record of key email threads for easy access across devices. Below are the steps you can follow for this process:

1. Select the email(s) you would like to send to OneNote. To save time, you may select multiple emails at once by holding Ctrl as you click to highlight each email. This method is useful when archiving a batch of relevant messages in bulk.

Note: When sending multiple emails to OneNote, they will all be copied to the chosen OneNote section, each as a separate note. This helps keep related messages grouped together for easier tracking.

2. On the Outlook Ribbon, navigate to the Home tab and locate the Move group. Click the OneNote button to initiate sending the selected emails to OneNote. For visual reference, see the screenshot below:

Additional Notes and Tips:

• If this is your first time sending to OneNote, Outlook will prompt you to complete a brief setup process. You'll see a dialog box notifying you that OneNote needs to set itself up before you can utilize this integration. Click the OK button to continue.

• Next, you may need to manually start the OneNote application to complete the setup. Click Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > OneNote. Launching OneNote at this stage ensures its services are enabled for integration.

• After launching OneNote, you can close it. The integration will remain active for future use, so you won't need to repeat this setup procedure next time.

3. A Select Location in OneNote dialog will appear whenever you use the OneNote send function. In this dialog:

• Select a specific Notebook and Section where you want to store these emails. Organize emails by project, topic, or workflow to keep information structured for easy retrieval.
• The Always send e-mail notes to the selected location option allows you to set a default destination, making repetitive organization tasks more efficient. Use this option if you regularly archive emails to the same section.
• Click OK after making your selections to confirm. The emails will be sent to OneNote and stored as pages under the chosen section.

4. OneNote will launch automatically (if not already open) and display the imported email content as a new note in your selected section. This enables you to annotate, organize, or add additional information as needed. If you regularly move emails to OneNote, keep in mind that the content will include the body, attachments, and some metadata depending on your version and settings.

• Should you encounter issues such as the OneNote button missing on the Ribbon, try restarting both Outlook and OneNote, or ensure that the OneNote add-in for Outlook is enabled at File > Options > Add-ins. Missing integration may require a repair of Office installation or updating your Office suite.
• Be mindful of the size and number of emails being moved at once. Sending a large batch of emails, or those with many attachments, may slow down the process or generate warnings if storage limits in OneNote are reached.
• Sending emails with sensitive or confidential information to shared or cloud-based notebooks may introduce privacy risks—always verify OneNote notebook permissions before archiving such correspondence.

VBA Code - Automate sending selected or filtered Outlook emails to specific sections in OneNote

If you need to automate the process of sending multiple, filtered, or specific emails to designated sections within OneNote, creating and running a custom VBA macro in Outlook can substantially boost efficiency. This approach is suitable for advanced users, power users, or those required to transfer large volumes of emails based on filters, rules, or recurring workflows, rather than one-off manual sends. Using VBA also offers additional flexibility for customization—such as predefining OneNote notebooks, sections, or setting naming conventions.

However, please note that this solution requires enabling macros and the OneNote application must be installed on your computer. It may not work in Outlook web or environments where macro execution is restricted due to security policies.

1. In Outlook, select the email(s) you want to send to OneNote. You can use the Selection pane to choose one or multiple items. Then, press Alt + F11 to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications editor.

2. In the opened VBA editor, click Insert > Module to create a new module. Next, copy and paste the following VBA code into the module window:

VBA code: Send selected Outlook emails to a specified OneNote section

Sub SendSelectedEmailsToOneNote()
    On Error Resume Next
    Dim objItem As Object
    Dim objMail As Outlook.MailItem
    Dim objShell As Object
    Dim objOneNoteApp As Object
    Dim tempFile As String
    Dim savePath As String
    Dim subjectClean As String
    Dim i As Integer
    
    xTitleId = "KutoolsforOutlook"
    
    Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    Set objOneNoteApp = CreateObject("OneNote.Application")
    
    If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count = 0 Then
        MsgBox "Please select at least one email.", vbExclamation, xTitleId
        Exit Sub
    End If
    
    For i = 1 To Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count
        Set objItem = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(i)
        
        If objItem.Class = olMail Then
            Set objMail = objItem
            
            ' Clean up the subject for file naming
            subjectClean = Replace(objMail.Subject, "\", "_")
            subjectClean = Replace(subjectClean, "/", "_")
            subjectClean = Replace(subjectClean, ":", "-")
            subjectClean = Replace(subjectClean, "*", "_")
            subjectClean = Replace(subjectClean, "?", "_")
            subjectClean = Replace(subjectClean, """", "'")
            subjectClean = Replace(subjectClean, "<", "_")
            subjectClean = Replace(subjectClean, ">", "_")
            subjectClean = Replace(subjectClean, "|", "_")
            
            tempFile = Environ("TEMP") & "\" & subjectClean & ".mht"
            objMail.SaveAs tempFile, olMHTML
            
            ' Modify & set your OneNote section here
            savePath = "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents\OneNote Notebooks\YourNotebookName\YourSectionName.one"
            objShell.Run Chr(34) & tempFile & Chr(34), 1, True
            objOneNoteApp.OpenHierarchy savePath, "", "", True
            
            ' Notify after send
            MsgBox "Email '" & objMail.Subject & "' has been sent to OneNote.", vbInformation, xTitleId
            
            Kill tempFile
        End If
    Next i
    
    Set objItem = Nothing
    Set objMail = Nothing
    Set objShell = Nothing
    Set objOneNoteApp = Nothing
End Sub

Please edit the savePath variable to match your actual OneNote Notebook and Section location on your computer for correct filing. Make sure that OneNote is installed at the path you specify, and your user account is correct. Saving in the wrong path may cause the macro not to work or OneNote not to open the file.

3. Press the F5 key to run the macro. The selected email(s) will be converted and sent to the specified OneNote section as a new page. After successful transfer, a "KutoolsforOutlook" dialog will confirm completion.

• Selection requirements: You must select at least one email in your current Outlook folder before executing the macro. If no emails are selected, a reminder will prompt you.
• This macro saves the selected email temporarily as an .mht file before importing it into OneNote. Temporary files are automatically deleted once the process completes.
• For security, review macro permissions set by your organization or IT policy. If macros are disabled, enable them for your session, or consult IT before proceeding.
• If OneNote does not receive the email as a page, check OneNote's notebook/section name and location, file permissions, and ensure that OneNote is not running in the background with file locks enabled.
• This script sends each selected email individually. If running on a large number of emails, consider breaking the task into smaller batches to improve reliability.

If you need more advanced automation, such as filtering emails by sender, date, or keyword prior to sending to OneNote, you can modify the macro with custom conditions inside the For ... Next loop. Always test VBA scripts on sample data before live use.

• If an error dialog appears or OneNote does not open as expected, check you've specified the correct path for notebooks and sections, that you have access permissions, and that OneNote is installed and up to date.
• Using this automation requires local OneNote desktop installations; cloud-only or OneNote for web may not support these VBA methods.
• Should issues persist, consider using the built-in Outlook-to-OneNote feature for basic needs, or explore Microsoft Power Automate for more robust, enterprise-grade workflow integrations between Outlook and OneNote.

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