The new Vertical Tabs layout option in OneNote for Windows will start rolling out in early 2023, and Office Insiders will get early access to it in the coming weeks. Once Vertical Tabs is enabled, notebooks and pages will be moved to a left panel and the horizontal tabs at the top of notebooks will disappear.

Once Vertical Tabs becomes generally available in OneNote for Windows, users will be able to enable or disable it by clicking on View > Tabs Layout. We’ve heard that many students also prefer this layout option to help simplify navigation, while making OneNote “look the same” on multiple platforms like OneNote web, Mac and iPad,” wrote Mike Tholfsen, Principal Product Manager on the Microsoft Education team.” “The #1 request we’ve heard from educators and schools looking to move to the OneNote on Windows (Desktop) version is an option to allow the user interface to look similar to the OneNote for Windows 10 version of OneNote, with pages, sections and notebooks aligned on the left-hand side, and the horizontal tabs to disappear. As it turns out, a lot of users have been missing the OneNote for Windows 10 UI. OneNote for Windows 10 probably was one of the most solid UWP apps Microsoft released on Windows 10, and it did a pretty good job at simplifying an app that had lots of features for power users, but a not-so-user-friendly UI. Now that the latter is no longer being developed, Microsoft acknowledged that many users who loved the design of the UWP-based OneNote for Windows 10 app have found it difficult to adapt to OneNote for Windows. Microsoft’s OneNote Desktop app for Windows is getting a new Vertical Tabs layout option that will make the app look similar to OneNote for Windows 10.

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