Office Settings & Configuration

How to Reorder Destination Notebooks in OneNote Class Notebook

Maira Mehtab Sep 20, 2026 869 views

Question details

Teachers and educators need a way to reorganize destination notebooks or hide archived ones when distributing content to students.

Product: Microsoft OneNote
Device & OS: not provided
Scenario: Distributing educational content, pages, or assignments to students via the Class Notebook distribution tool.
Observed behavior: Destination notebooks appear in an arbitrary order and continue to list old or archived team notebooks, making the distribution process cluttered and confusing.

Before you start

Verify that you are using the latest version of the OneNote desktop or web application and ensure you have proper teacher permissions for the Class Notebooks you manage.

Solution 1Recommended

Acknowledge the Limitation and Submit Feedback

Microsoft OneNote currently lacks a built-in feature to manually reorder destination notebooks or automatically hide archived ones during content distribution.

As of the current version, the Class Notebook add-in or built-in feature populates destination notebooks dynamically from your account's connected SharePoint sites and OneDrive. It does not offer a toggle to filter out archived Teams notebooks or custom sorting options (such as alphabetical order or manual drag-and-drop).

Acknowledge the system limitation

When clicking 'Distribute Page' or 'Distribute New Section', recognize that the list of destination notebooks will appear in the default system order, which currently cannot be modified locally.

Submit feedback via OneNote

Open your OneNote app, navigate to 'Help' > 'Feedback' (or 'Send Feedback'), and formally request the ability to sort destination notebooks or hide archived ones from the distribution panel.

Use the Microsoft Feedback Portal

Visit the official Microsoft Feedback portal online, search for 'Class Notebook sorting', and upvote existing requests from other educators so the product team can prioritize adding notebook ordering and filtering controls.

Workaround for Teachers: While you cannot hide archived notebooks in the distribution list, you can rename older Microsoft Teams or Class Notebooks with a prefix like 'Z_Archive' in their source location. If alphabetical sorting is applied in future updates, this will ensure they naturally group at the bottom.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Can I permanently delete old Class Notebooks to remove them from the list?

Yes, if a Class Notebook is completely deleted from its root location in SharePoint or OneDrive, it will eventually disappear from the destination distribution list. However, this action will permanently destroy all student data and teacher materials within that notebook.

Why do my archived Microsoft Teams notebooks still appear in OneNote?

Archiving a team in Microsoft Teams makes the team read-only, but it does not delete the underlying SharePoint site or the associated Class Notebook. Because the notebook still exists, the OneNote distribution tool continues to detect it as a valid destination.

Is there a third-party add-in to fix Class Notebook sorting?

Currently, there are no verified third-party add-ins that alter or fix the built-in content distribution panel of the official Class Notebook feature. Any changes to this interface must come through official Microsoft updates.

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