How to Create a Personal Wiki Using Microsoft OneNote
What Makes OneNote a Great Wiki
At its core, a wiki is a collaborative space on the web where anyone can add or edit some content. On any given page, you can directly link between pages by marking up certain keywords and topics.
The software would then automatically catalogs and creates a hierarchy of the categories from the top to the bottom. Although OneNote cannot match a dedicated wiki application, it has some very amazing wiki-related features.
It is free, cross-platform, and very easy to set up. If you are a small team, you can share some organized information without going through a steep learning curve.
OneNote does not limit you to a particular information structure. Just like in a wiki, you can go to any depth. The notebook is made up of sections. Each section can be divided into certain groups with different subjects in it. And each section can hold lots of pages or subpages, interlinked with each other.
Anyone that has access privileges to the notebook can edit the OneNote content. They do not even need to know wiki-style editing.
How to Set Up a Wiki in OneNote
1. Create a Homepage
Here, we would set up a wiki homepage with a rough outline of the document. Outlines come with a condensed view of a particular subject. They are often created to plan and summarize a particular project.
You can have an outline with the main heading at the top and three levels of main points below, each of them would have five to six lines of detail in our example.
Since each project can be different, you can add goals, a to-do list, a calendar, a Kanban board, or anything to personalize them. With the linking capabilities of OneNote, you can connect each topic there to a page, paragraph, a page in different sections, or to a separate notebook.
2. Link to any Page or Section Using the Wiki Syntax
If you are just getting started, you can instantly turn these points into its individual pages. To do this, highlight your text and click on Link to Pages from the context menu.
Each point would create a separate page in your notebook and inserts the internal links pointing to the corresponding page.
OneNote also offers support for link-creating syntax that is used in several wiki packages. Enter in a pair of left brackets together with the name of the page or the section. This text should match exactly with the name of your link target. Then end your link with a pair of right brackets.
If the name of your link target already exists, the text would point to that location with a blue, solid line. Or else, OneNote would create a new blank page with a blue, broken line that tells you to add content to this page.
3. Link to a Section Through Link Dialog Box
Highlight the text that you want to link, then select Insert > Link. From the Link dialog box that comes up, click on the Plus sign that is next to a notebook, expand the notebook and choose your desired section. Click on the section or page that you want to link, and click OK.
4. Link to a Specific Paragraph
You can also link to a specific paragraph in a notebook. This enables you to go directly to the exact information. Open the notebook and go over to the paragraph you want to link the document to.
Highlight your text, right-click, and choose the Copy Link to Paragraph option. Then switch to a page in another section, highlight the text and enter your link through the link dialog box.
How to View Page History in OneNote
The history page would show all the edits that the users made to an article. In Wikipedia, you will see the page history as View history at the top right corner of the page. You can drill down to a vast selection of pages and edits going back for decades.
In OneNote 2016, go over to the History section and click on Page Versions. You will see all the edits you made to that page with their dates in the page navigation bar.
To restore the older version, click the yellow bar at the top of the page. You can then choose to restore the page or delete this history from page versions.
