How to Convert OneNote to EXCEL on Mac?
Written By
Shivansh Shukla
Updated on
November 6th, 2025
6 minutes Read
Introdution: While planning a business trip, employees have been recording budget expenses in OneNote. This scattered information is narrative rather than numerical. Therefore, they decided to prepare a financial budget report and were required to convert OneNote to Excel. But, how do they do it? This blog will provide different approaches to make this conversion happen. For quick and reliable options, use the professional MacSonik OneNote Converter. Also, the manual approach is effective only for simple conversions. Let’s start with the blog.
Lucas Wright Question: “When I export my OneNote notes from macOS to Excel, I find that images, embedded files, and attachments don’t transfer to the Excel spreadsheet. I need the full content including pictures and documents for my project report. Is there any way of exporting the images and attachments during the conversion of OneNote to an Excel spreadsheet on macOS? Or, is there a specific tool or workaround that I could use to make this happen?”
Need to Transform OneNote to EXCEL
The Excel format provides a structure for the OneNote data in a systematic manner, making it more organized. The following are the reasons why users consider the need to do this conversion:
- MS Excel allows users to transform unstructured OneNote pages into structured tables.
- With Excel’s advanced tools, users can apply formulas and perform calculations for evaluating OneNote data.
- By turning OneNote data into Excel, one can create professional business reports and charts.
- The Excel format makes it easy for everyone to view and edit your data, making collaboration simple.
- After users export OneNote into Excel, they can combine their Excel information with other business tools.
Simple Methods to Convert OneNote to EXCEL
Manual Method 01: Exporting Data from OneNote to Excel
In this method, the user has complete control over their data. Users can copy the required OneNote data and paste it into an Excel sheet.
By following the steps below, export data to Excel:
- First, open the OneNote page that contains the data you want to export.
- After that, select the desired data, like text, tables, or notes.
- Then, press Command+C to copy the selected data.
- Now, open MS Excel and press Command+V to paste the data into the worksheet.
- If needed, adjust formatting or edit the data as per the need.
Limitations: After pasting the data into Excel, manual adjustments are required. Copying the data from multiple OneNote pages will take a considerable amount of time. This method is not suitable for exporting a large amount of information from different pages.
Manual Method 02: Export OneNote Pages to XLS
This method involves two phases:
These are the steps to follow to export OneNote data to an Excel sheet:
- Open the OneNote application on your system.
- Then, head to the File menu and click on Print.
- After that, click PDF and save the file in PDF format.
- At last, open the PDF file and copy-paste the required data into an Excel sheet and save it as an .xls file.
Limitations: For exporting large notebooks, the process becomes time-consuming. The exported tables and some formatting may need to be adjusted. Also, there is no option to bulk export the OneNote pages.
Manual Method 03: Convert OneNote Data to Excel
It involves converting your OneNote content into an Excel-supported .txt format. After that, copy the content from a .txt file and paste it into Excel.
Use the instructions to start the process:
- Launch the OneNote application and open the desired OneNote page.
- Select the content that needs to be exported and press Command+C.
- Next, go to TextEdit, select Format, then Make Plain Text.
- After that, copy the text then hit Ctrl+V to paste the text in TextEdit.
- Then, save the file under the .TXT file extension.
- Open MS Excel and click on the Data tab.
- Next, press Get External Data > From Text and select the saved .txt file.
- Specify the delimiters in the Text Import Wizard and then import the data into Excel.
Limitations: Once the data is imported into Excel, users have to manually define the Excel delimiters. The formatting is lost, and all the data becomes plain text.
A Specialized Tool to Convert OneNote to Excel on Mac
When working with multiple OneNote notebooks, the MacSonik OneNote Converter simplifies the process. The tool provides an efficient way to handle large data volumes while maintaining data integrity. Also, it preserves all the embedded images, audio, and other media. Users can also export the OneNote notebooks into a variety of output formats, such as DOCX, PDF, etc. In addition to this, users can also convert OneNote to HTML format. Moreover, it also allows users to refine the process by excluding attachments or applying date-based filtering.
Steps to open OneNote data in Microsoft Excel
- To start with, download and install the MacSonik OneNote Converter on your Mac system.
- Then, click on the Continue button to proceed.
- Next, use the Select Files option to add the required OneNote file.
- After that, browse the file, select it, and Open it.
- Now, preview the contents of your selected OneNote file and hit Next.
- At last, pick Excel as the saving format, apply filters, and hit Convert to start the process.
Conclusion
To conclude, the OneNote to Excel conversion is necessary to improve productivity and collaboration. In this blog, we have listed multiple methods to convert OneNote to Excel. We have used both manual methods and an automated method using MacSonik OneNote Converter. The manual methods carry several drawbacks; hence, we recommend the tool. Users can convert OneNote to Excel online for free by downloading the trial version of the tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Can I export OneNote pages or sections directly to Excel? Ans: No. There is no direct option or feature to export OneNote pages to Excel. First, you need to convert the OneNote pages into PDF or .txt format and then import them into Excel. We can also copy-paste the data from a OneNote file into an Excel sheet.
Q2. Does converting to Excel include images and attachments from OneNote? Ans: Most of the manual methods convert the texts, tables, and numerical data only. These do not import images, audio files, embedded PDFs, or attachments. With a MacSonik OneNote Converter, one can easily export all the OneNote data into Excel format.
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