In OneNote the Search bar has moved, How do I put it back to where it was?

Hello,

Welcome to the Microsoft Community Forum. Please accept our warmest regards and sincerest hope that all is well despite the situation you find yourself in.

To move the Search bar back to its original position in OneNote, you can try the following steps:

1. Open OneNote on your Windows 11 device.
2. Click on the "View" tab in the top menu bar.
3. Look for the "Search" group.
4. Click on the "Search" dropdown menu.
5. Select "Dock to left" or "Dock to right" to move the Search bar back to its original position on the side of the pages list.

If the above steps do not resolve the issue, you may need to check for any updates for OneNote or Windows 11 that could potentially address this problem.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Fordy B.

Microsoft Community Moderator

There is no 'Search' group under the view tab, adding the search command manually to the ribbon doesn't provide any options for docking. There is no updates available, this behavior change came in after a recent update this week.

There is no "Search Group" under the View tab. If you right click on the ribbon and select to customize it, there is a "Pages" tab that is not shown as an option in the ribbon, and it has a "Navigation" group and Search is listed under that. However, adding that to any of the visible tabs in the ribbon does just the same thing as clicking on the search bar, it just expands the search bar down and to the left and waits for you to type in a search. Right clicking on the Search icon in the ribbon does nothing but bring up the same menu where you can select to customize the ribbon.

Apparently, Microsoft considers this a feature: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft_365blog/more-room-for-your-notes-in-onenote/4411729

Please provide feedback through OneNote to let them know that the feature is a negative for most of us.

Thanks for sharing that article.

I can't believe that Microsoft would misrepresent their own software! Microsoft makes excellent software, but occasionally makes a mistake, and this is one of those mistakes.

The article says, "We’ve eliminated the unused horizontal space between the ribbon and your canvas". That's not unused space. It's normally filled in by all the tabs within a notebook. This is such a bizarre "update" by Microsoft! The search box was placed in a very efficient spot in terms of screen "real estate" - right in line with the tabs line. You can search for "tabs" screenshots on any web browser, and see picture after picture of the search box placement being very efficient. Microsoft has had this aspect of the User Interface well designed for years. And now it's changed, with no option to keep it in the excellent historical location? This new change is bizarre, especially since it is not based on the typical notebook with multiple tabs.

Here's a typical example you can find on the web in previous version of OneNote. Wow, that is great UI design for efficient search box placement!!