Proper planning for your OneNote notebooks and sections can make a huge impact on the performance of your solution. 

Decide where are you going to access your information most frequently.  Are you a heavy desktop user or are you a road-warrior mobile user? Each entails organizational choices that will make or break your performance.

Desktop users can leverage the power of their computers and Internet connectivity to have larger, more complicated notebooks. Mobile users should lean towards smaller, less complex notebooks and only open the ones they need frequently to minimize the time for synchronization and amount of storage on their mobile device.

The performance of OneNote Desktop is impacted by a number of factors.  These include: number of notebooks open, size of notebooks, speed of internet connection, and power of your computer.

The following steps will help you control the performance of OneNote Desktop within the application, but remember there are changes you can make outside the application that will also assist in getting greater performance from OneNote.

Click "Percentage of unused space to allow in files without optimizing". The lower the number the more frequent optimizations will be run.

Percentage of unused space to allow in files without optimizing

Click "Optimize files after OneNote has been inactive for the following number of minutes". Optimizing runs in the background while OneNote Desktop is idle, and this will determine how long OneNote will wait in an idle state before triggering an optimization.

Optimize files after OneNote has been inactive for the following number of minutes

Click "Optimize All Files Now" to run an optimization manually.  The time to execute will vary based on the number of notebooks you have open.

A notebook must be open in OneNote Desktop to be optimized.

These performance settings have the greatest impact on laptops operating in battery mode to maximize battery life.  If you are plugged in, running at Maximum Performance is the best option from the desktop.

Click on [[Options]] at the bottom of the page.

Click on the pull down arrow under Battery Options.

Onenote

This guide provides step-by-step instructions to optimize and back up your OneNote files, resulting in improved performance. It covers settings to optimize file size and frequency of optimization, as well as how to maximize performance for an efficient user experience. Following these steps will help ensure smooth operation and protection of your OneNote data.

Maximizing OneNote Performance: Optimizing and Backing Up Files - GelwicksTech

Planning

Optimizing your Desktop

Performance