Templates are relatively easy to use and create in OneNote. There are a wide variety of pre-defined template styles to choose from. There are 33 blank templates that define everything from specific page sizes to the page color.

A6 paper size	Blue Mist

There are 5 academic templates designed to help you get rolling quickly in your school classes. They're pre-designed for classes such as Simple Lectures, Math/Science Classes or History Class.

Simple Lecture	Math/Science Class	History Class

Then you have 67 decorative templates that contain everything from simple background pictures, such as Hearts or Boxes to complex and beautiful background images such as Bamboo, or Blue Clouds and much, much more.

Hearts	Bamboo	Blue Clouds

You also have 3 To Do List style templates which can help you begin a simple or prioritized to do list.

Simple To Do List	Prioritized To Do List

And finally, 7 business templates to help you get started taking notes quickly in meetings, such as Project Overview or Formal Meeting Notes

Project Overview	Formal Meeting Notes

This makes a total of 115 pre-defined templates to choose from.

To look at a sample of the available templates, simply click Format  -> Templates. Then expand the category you're interested in and begin clicking through the templates you'd like to view. When you click on a template, OneNote will actually create a new page, then apply the template to it, unless you're already starting with a new page.

Tips:

• There is no preview of templates. To see what a template looks like, follow the instructions in the paragraph above.
• To set a template as the default for a given section, just navigate to the section, then right-click the template and select Set as Default for This Section.
• To customize your own template, just set the page up exactly as you want your template to look, then click Save current page as a template at the bottom of the Templates task pane. You will then be prompted to enter a template name and specify whether you want the template to be used as a default template for the current section.
  • Your new customized template will appear in a new category called My Templates.

• To delete a customized template, right-click the template -> Delete.
  • Only customized templates can be deleted.

Notes:

• Templates cannot be able to applied an existing page, unless it's never had any content on it before.
• Templates can only be applied to a single page at a time, i.e. they cannot be applied to an entire section or notebook.
• A while ago I created a powertoy called OneNote Template Manager to circumvent the 2 points listed above. With it, you can apply a template to pages that you have already added notes to. In addition, you can create your own custom templates and apply them to any scope you specify, i.e. apply a template to a range of selected pages, or to an entire section or notebook, etc. However, the templates created with this powertoy are not able to be managed inside of OneNote, but rather inside the powertoy itself. Click here to give it a try.