OneNote provides task panes to help you perform many different kinds of tasks, from checking the spelling of your notes to conducting research. Task panes provide convenient access to the options related to a particular task, but they do have one drawback: they can get in the way. You can, however, open and close task panes very easily. You can also move, resize, and dock them along the edge of the screen with a few simple techniques.

To open a task pane, on the ribbon, click the Review tab and then click the associated button. For example, when you click the Spelling button, the Spelling task pane appears on the right. Close it by clicking the task pane’s Close button (the “X” in the upper-right corner). You can also close a task pane by clicking its button on the Review tab. For example, to close the Spelling task pane, click the Spelling button again.

If you want to continue to use a task pane but it’s in the way, you can move it to a different part of the screen, away from its docked position on the right side of the window. When you want, you can easily re-dock the task pane. To move a task pane, hover the mouse pointer over the task pane’s title bar. Drag the task pane by its title bar to move it into the middle of the screen. To re-dock the task pane, double-click its title bar or drag it to the right side of the screen until it docks automatically.

You can reduce the amount of space a task pane occupies on the right side of the screen while it’s docked by resizing it. You can also make a docked task pane wider, if needed. To do so, hover the pointer over the left boundary of the docked task pane, then drag the boundary to the left or right.

If a task pane has been moved into the center of the screen, you can resize it by hovering the pointer over its lower-right corner and dragging the corner.