Click on "Deploy Server".
Wait a few minutes for the server to deploy. Once ready, it will show a "Started" state.
In the chat, type @ followed by the MCP server name and your instructions, e.g., "@OneNote (Local) — MCP Server List all sections in my D&D notebook"
That's it! The server will respond to your query, and you can continue using it as needed.
Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots.
I rebuilt this local MCP server so Claude can read and write my local Microsoft OneNote notebooks directly — no Microsoft account, API key, or Azure app registration needed, everything runs locally on your machine. Windows only, since it drives the OneNote desktop app directly — no macOS/Linux support. It reads from OneNote's local backup snapshots for quick browsing and search, and talks directly to the running OneNote desktop app via its COM automation interface for always-current reads and for writing and organizing content.
Have fun with it. Between live edits, undo/redo, and no longer hunting through nested sections by hand, I've caught myself opening OneNote's actual window less and less — Claude just does it for me now, correctly, most of the time. If it saves you even half the clicking it's saved me, consider your evening reclaimed.
I run a D&D campaign, and years of session notes, NPC write-ups, quizzes, and my DM diary all live in OneNote. I didn't want to migrate all of that to Notion or one of the other note apps that already have an official Claude connector — OneNote is simply where the notes already were, and restructuring years of notebooks just to get a connector felt like the wrong trade-off. But I also didn't want to keep manually copy-pasting pages into Claude every time I needed context — "wait, what actually happened in session 4?" shouldn't mean digging through OneNote by hand every time. So instead of switching tools, I built the bridge myself.
This started as mhzarem/onenote-mcp, a small MCP server for reading local OneNote backup files and writing to OneNote via COM. It covered the basics, but couldn't read a single page or a whole section straight from the live app, couldn't organize sections at all, and had a small escaping bug in page titles. I picked it up and substantially extended it to close those gaps. It stays open source.
Related MCP server: OneNote MCP Server
Type | Feature | Description |
Reading |
| Read the full text of a single page directly from the running OneNote app |
Reading |
| Read every page in a section directly from the running app |
Reading |
| List sections and pages currently in a notebook's recycle bin |
Reading | OCR text extraction |
|
Writing |
| Insert an image onto a page from a local file path — or by filename alone if it's in the default Downloads folder |
Organizing |
| Create a new section in a notebook |
Organizing |
| Create a new section group (folder) in a notebook |
Organizing |
| Move a section to a different section group, or back to the notebook's top level — also restores a section out of the recycle bin |
Organizing |
| Rename an existing section |
Organizing |
| Rename an existing page's title, without touching its content |
Deleting |
| Delete a section (moved to the OneNote recycle bin, not permanent) — requires an explicit confirmation before it executes |
Deleting |
| Delete a page — same recycle-bin safety net and confirmation requirement |
Display | Nested hierarchy view |
|
Fixed | Page-title escaping | Titles containing |
Compatibility | Backup-folder detection | The local backup folder is auto-detected regardless of Windows/Office display language, instead of assuming the English name "Backup" |
Compatibility | Real Downloads-folder detection | Resolves Windows' actual configured Downloads location (via |
Distribution |
| Packaged as a self-contained bundle for one-click installation in Claude Desktop |
Writing |
| Find and replace exact text within a page |
Writing |
| Replace the last content block on a page, without needing to know what it said — requires confirmation if the page has only one block |
Writing |
| Insert a new paragraph right after existing text elsewhere on the page, not just at the end |
Undo/Redo |
| Undo the most recent change, or redo the most recently undone one — backed by a persistent history log that survives restarts |
Undo/Redo |
| See recent changes, or the full detail behind one of them |
Undo/Redo |
| Look up where the action history log lives on disk |
Reading |
| List image files available in the default image drop folder |
See CHANGELOG.md for the version-by-version history.
Windows, with the Microsoft OneNote desktop app installed
For the backup-based reading tools: OneNote must have run at least once so a local backup exists
For the live tools I made: OneNote just needs to be installed — its COM API starts it automatically if it isn't already running
Drag the .mcpb file onto Claude Desktop (or double-click it) and confirm the install prompt. Claude Desktop manages the Python/uv runtime itself, so nothing else needs to be installed. Restart Claude Desktop afterwards.
The backup-reading tools parse the .one files OneNote automatically keeps under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\OneNote\16.0\<Backup>\. The folder name is auto-detected regardless of Windows language (English "Backup", German "Sicherung", etc.) — it scans for whichever subfolder actually contains .one files.
The live tools drive the OneNote desktop app through its COM automation interface (OneNote.Application), invoked via PowerShell under the hood.
Originally created by mhzarem under the MIT license, and that's a real starting point I'm glad I didn't have to build from scratch, not a formality. But to be straight about where things stand now: the original could only read from local backup files and had a handful of basic write calls — no live reads, no organizing sections or pages, no editing, no undo. Everything that makes this a tool worth actually reaching for day to day — live reads and writes, section/page organizing, image insertion, find-and-replace, undo/redo, and more — I built. At this point my own additions outnumber what the original project ever had by a wide margin. Still stays open source under the same MIT license, and I'm not the original author of the concept or the backup-parsing groundwork it started from — just everything built on top of it since.
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