How Do I Password Protect My Planner?

OneNote has the ability to lock sections of your planner. This is helpful for shared OneNote notebooks to control access of specific members.

We'll go over how to add a password to a section, how to manually lock all password-protected sections, and how to change and remove passwords.

⚠️NOTE⚠️ Read this before you lock any section of your planner!

If you forget any of your section passwords, no one will be able to unlock those notes for you (not even Microsoft's tech support). Take extra precaution when creating and changing passwords.
Passwords can be applied only to notebook sections, not to entire notebooks.
You can only lock or unlock all password-protected notebook sections at once.
Passwords are case-sensitive. Make sure that the Caps Lock key is off before you create or enter a password.
Password-protected sections aren’t included in notebook searches. To include the notes in a protected section in a search, you’ll have to unlock that section first.

Adding a Password to a Notebook Section

Step 1

Right-click on the section you would like to lock with a password and select "Password Protect This Section".

Step 2

The panel shown below will appear on the right. Click on the "Set Password" button.

Step 3

Another pop-up window will appear prompting you to enter and confirm your password, as shown below. Once you're finished, select "OK". This process may take a minute or two depending on the number of pages within the notebook section.

Step 4

Write your password down and store it in a safe place.

Locking All Protected Notebook Sections

Your password-protected notebook section is still unlocked for a while by default. To lock your notebook section immediately, you can press "CTRL" + "ALT" + "L" on your keyboard. As noted earlier, this also locks all your other password-protected notebook sections.

Alternatively, you can right-click on the notebook section and select "Password Protect This Section" to open up the Password Protection panel again. Under "All Protected Sections", you can click on the "Lock All" button.

Changing or Removing Your Password

Right-click on the protected notebook section you would like to change, then select "Password Protect This Selection" to open the Password Protection panel.

To change your password, click on the "Change Password" button as shown below. You will be prompted to enter your current password before entering a new one.
To remove your password, click on "Remove Password". You will be prompted to enter your current password before the password can be removed.