Office 2013 Tip: Disable Send to OneNote Tool

Like many Office users, I like to customize the Office experience to my work style and I’m very specific about some settings. But in Office 2013, I’ve had a curiously difficult time figuring out how to fully disable the Send to OneNote Tool. Turns out it’s really easy.

You know the Send to OneNote Tool. It’s installed with Office 2013 and sits in the tray, like a tick, defying any attempt to remove it.

You can uncheck that “Start with OneNote” checkbox in the applet itself. You can mill around in Task Manager (in Windows 8 anyway) and remove it from the list of applications that start up with Windows. But it keeps coming back.

Now, you may actually want to use this tool. I’m told it can be useful, especially on touch-based tablets, where it provides one-tap access to the note-taking solution’s Screen Clippings (screenshots), Send (from IE) to OneNote and New Quick Note features. If so, please ignore this tip.

I don’t use this tool and don’t want it appearing constantly. And the more it defies my wishes, the more aggravating it becomes.

Fortunately, I’ve complained about this enough that a number of readers have sent in the very easy fix: Just navigate to File, Options and then display in OneNote. Then, uncheck the option titled “Place OneNote icon in the notification area of the taskbar.”

Voila. No more OneNote Tool. I’m embarrassed I didn’t find that one myself. But I appreciate the heads-up and pass it along so others can take advantage.

Enjoy OneNote. It’s one of the best things about Office 2013, in my opinion.