OneNote has a very nice and handy calculator. Start using it NOW.
Estimated Reading Time 3 min
Contents
The Need for OneNote calculator
OneNote is not Excel. Nor does it aspire to be. But sometimes you want to get some calculations done WHILE you are taking notes or happen to be in OneNote for some other reason.
No need to start Excel or the Calculator. OneNote has a built-in calculator.
Simple Math
Just type the mathematical expression and press equals sign = followed by Spacebar. That’s it. OneNote will calculate it. You can add more calculations if required.
15 * 20 * 90 = <spacebar>
You can continue the calculation further if you want…
This works only in some cases. I have not yet figured out when it works and when it does not. When I do, I will post it here.
Operators
Plus, minus, divide ( / forward slash) and multiply (*) are the simple ones.
You can also use x or X for multiplication operations.
But it also supports factorial (!), exponential (^) and percentage (%).
Constants
Pi or Phi are also supported – you must add them from Insert Symbol.
π= 3.141592653589793
Π= 3.141592653589793
φ= 1.618033988749895
Φ= 1.618033988749895
Functions
As though this was not enough, it supports the following functions:
ABS, ACOS, ASIN, ATAN, COS, DEG, LN, LOG, LOG2, LOG10, MOD, PI, PHI, PMT, RAD, SIN, SQRT, TAN
Don’t like the built-in OneNote Calculator? Just disable it.
For whatever reason, if you don’t want the automatic calculations to happen, you can switch them off from File – Options – Advanced
This is a global setting. It will affect all notebooks.
If you want to stop calculation for only few instances, do NOT use this setting.
If an unwanted calculation happens, just use UNDO.
Come on. Show it off to your friends!
You can also refer to this MSDN article for details.
10 Responses
Very useful, I did not know this was possible. However, continuing after the initial calculation does not work for me.
Hi
You are right. It does not work.
It appears to work because it just gives the same expression again.
I have corrected the article accordingly.
Thanks.
This is very interesting but I wonder how to sum a column.
Hi
Sum of column is not available in OneNote. Word has it. But in OneNote you can convert a table to Excel and perform all kinds of calculations.
I wonder if it’s ever going to work with hand written expressions..?! 🙂 Would be awesome!
You can convert ink to text and then press = sign to calculate.
Why are you not responding Nitin Paranjape? There is no need to invite readers to react & then for you te remain silent. Not very professional.
Hi
Sorry. Missed responding to your earlier messages.
Replied already. Usually I respond within a day or two.
These two responses were left unanswered because I wanted to do some research before responding and then it slipped my mind.
i noticed it seems to do power calculations wrong. I wrote 2 (superscript) 4 = and it gives me 24. but when i write 2^4 = 16. It must understand the subscript as something different than a power function?
2^4 is the right way of typing a formula. Superscript does not calculate anything. It is just showing you 2 and 4 as 24 – completely ignoring the superscript formatting.
Try 2(superscript)4589 the result will be 24589.