We’ve tried to make the act of adding a new page in OneNote simple and easy.  You just click the New Page button at the top of your list of pages and a new page is inserted at the end of the section.  Easy, right?

You can also achieve the same behavior by pressing <Ctrl + N>.  There are several ways to increase/decrease the page level after you’ve inserted it too.  To increase the page level, press <Ctrl + Alt + ]>.  Similarly, to decrease the page level, you can press <Ctrl + Alt + [>.  Or, by clicking the arrow next to the New Page button, you can add a new subpage to the end of the section.

In OneNote 2010, we’ve added a new 3rd page level.  When you add a new page using the button described above, it always gets inserted at the end of the section, and it gets inserted as a 1st level page. 

So, what if you want to add a new 2nd or 3rd level page?  And what if you don’t actually want the page to be added to the end of the section, but instead you want it inserted somewhere in the middle of your list of pages?

Welcome to OneNote’s newest UI element, affectionately known as the Page Tab Floatie.   This little gem appears whenever you hover your mouse pointer over your list of pages.  It remains visible and follows your mouse movement as long as your mouse pointer remains on the page tabs.  Then,

once you move your mouse pointer over it, it displays a bar in your list of page tabs indicating where a new page will be inserted when you click on it.  We tried to make it smart enough to know whether to add a 1st, 2nd or 3rd level page, based upon what page level appears above/below the new page location.  For example, in the picture to the left, the bar appears between a 3rd level and 2nd level page.  Clicking on the Page Tab floatie, will insert a new 3rd level page in the location indicated by the bar.

I think the designed logic is pretty good at getting it right most of the time, but it’s not fool-proof.  Occasionally, it’s just going to get it wrong.  So, we’ve added the ability to recover by dragging the page horizontally, left/right, to adjust page levels.  You can also drag the page vertically, up/down, to move the page to a different location.  Once you drop the page, the designed logic kicks in to determine what level to drop the page at.

Tips:

• You can use the keyboard to mimic the same behavior by pressing <Ctrl + Alt + N>.  A new page gets inserted immediately following the current page.
• If you want to insert a new subpage beneath the current page, just press <Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N>
• To disable the Page Tab Floatie click File –> Options –> Display –> uncheck the box ‘Show the floating New Page button near page tabs’