How to move OneNote section tabs and pages to the left (updated June 2023)

Back in 2018, I wrote about the only way to move section tabs to the left at the time and, unfortunately, it meant that you’d have sections on the left AND the top. Now, thanks to continuing development of OneNote, we have a new view setting called Tabs Layout that fixes the issue and moves your notebook, section, and page navigation panels to the left of your OneNote desktop app.

Now it’s simple, and you don’t even have to open the Options menu. Here’s how to move your section tabs and pages to the left:

1. Select the View ribbon menu
2. Select Tabs Layout and then
3. Choose Vertical Tabs or Horizontal Tabs (default).

Here’s a video demonstration of these steps with additional info:

It’s worth noting that if you select Vertical Tabs, your display settings (File | Options | Display) are restricted since it cancels out other options. For example, pages can’t be moved back to the right side.

And, lastly, f you don’t want to move pages to the left or if you ONLY want to move pages to the left, please check out my previous post for instructions on that setting.