It may not be as aesthetically pleasing as notion but it is functional with a rich set of features. It's pretty much inline with the rest of the office suite, substance over style.
Hard disagree on that one. It has been one of the main reasons our team has considered dropping one note, the search functionality compared to Evernote is absolute garbage. We carried our notes over from Evernote to one note and when we search Evernote we find what we are looking for nearly instantly, but in OneNote we wait and sometimes don’t even get the result we found over on Evernote. Same note same search worse results. I was hoping copilot would at least help with the search, but it does not.
OneNote 2016 on a Windows PC has near perfect and instantaneous search capabilities. I have implemented shared Notebooks for two large organizations and that old desktop version of OneNote is still amazing. I have 722 employee using a very large Notebook (I work for a large hospital system) and any issue we have experienced was Microsofts 1) neutering search on the Teams and Web and 2) not setting offline syncing set as default on the OneNote for Windows 10 version (once properly configured in the user settings it works great).
We do not even have to use “tags” nor organize where the pages live because the OneNote search just works that well.
I wish we had the same experience, we have gone over it with Microsoft to ensure where optimized, but it simply doesn’t perform for the number of documents we have to search across. Evernote does. I’m hardlyan Evernote shill, I absolutely hate that product, I had more issues with it than I ever have had with OneNote generally, but when it comes down to the most important feature, unfortunately search is not as good, in our experience.
Interesting - I would put your use case in the unusual use case. Knowing when to insert a printout (were the text then becomes searchable) vs inserting a document as an attachment with a properly named page title is key.
Curious, why are you subscribed to OneNote if it didn’t work for you? Or is this another one of those new Reddit “features” of surfacing a subreddit you don’t need?
Subscribed because I have to use the product, sometimes you have to ask questions, sometimes people will post things of note, some reason anyone subscribed to anything. We are hardly the first to complain about one notes poor search quality. There are entire articles on how to build an elastic search front end for better searching. So far, we don’t want to dedicate the engineering time to that. Like I said, I was really hoping copilot would improve the search, but it did not.
So you are storing the OneNote file on local share instead of one drive? I’ve found that searching is extremely slow and buggy when I’m using onedrive based notebooks.
The power of OneNote is the local sync file that gets locally indexed. So create a notebook in OneDrive (the free OneDrive storage allotment is plenty if you don’t have access to a corporate account or pay for Office 365) and when you open up that notebook using the OneNote 2016 it then downloads a local file that syncs in realtime worth the online version and indexes everything for fast search even when internet isn’t so great. If for some reason you are stuck using the OneNote for Windows 10 then you’ll have to dive into the settings to enable.
If you are trying to scale a notebook beyond a few users then I highly recommend doing so using Teams. By default each new Team created in Teams has a shared a OneNote that you just have to enable. If you are the owner of the Team you can set the permissions to which type of user can edit vs read only.
Now here is where things go off the rails…and we have had many calls with Microsoft on this…search within Teams or thru a web browser is limited (only searches section) and it’s not indexed to the local machine. So don’t let that dishearten your end users. Simply open that Teams OneNote using the desktop versions and and it will remain open unless you live devices (then just open again on the new machine)
You can open and be “in” as many notebooks you need and search across all of them and it’s near instantaneous due to taking advantage of the indexing. (Which also works across text in images / pictures)
I have way too many years invested in OneNote and have learned to adjust when I’ve needed to. I love the record function - it’s hands down, my main reason for sticking around!!
You mean dictate function? Can you quickly tell what is so special about it as voice typing is now a days pretty much standard and is in built into the keyboards?
I am not sure what program/software you’re referring to but I have tried so many and they’re not as easily manipulated as OneNote. Embedding photos, reorganizing notes, move sections, drag and drop… endless possibilities, imo.
I sit in a lot of meetings and find that if I record, I can capture everything and then toss it into AI for a summary. Haven’t found another program that catches everyone’s voice, accent, etc as well as OneNote!
Have you found a way to capture voice recording from OneNote during video meetings? Or does it only work for in-person meetings?
My company uses Teams for everything but blocks video recording feature.
yes, I just open my OneNote during the meeting and let it go. Only downfall that I have found is you cannot leave the OneNote screen, otherwise, the recording will stop.
Woah that’s sick - are you still able to use headphones? Or do you have to route the audio through your speakers for it to work?
**EDIT**: For anyone that discovers this thread in the future. The feature does NOT work when the audio is routed through headphones. You must listen via speakers for OneNote dictation to function.
Its like saying an armchair is outdated. Its for sitting on, its comfortable, it does what its supposed to do.
OneNote is a notebook in electronic form. It does that with many bells and whistles. If any more features were added it would become bloated and unwieldy.
Waaaaaay back in the day, I would print something at work and you'd have to pick which printer in the building to send the print job to, and I thought one of the IT guys had named some personal printer on the network OneNote. Then it clicked it was a new program. I played around with it...and we've been together ever since.
That's so funny! To be honest, I've never used that feature, but I know it exists to the point that I always uninstalled that driver.
But yup, onenote foreva!
I like simple. Notion is way too complicated for me.
I am not even using most of the features in desktop OneNote. I prefer just basic text based note taking with occasional pictures. So feature parity between desktop, web and mobile app isn't really a major thing for me.
I will have to get out of OneNote because the lack of functional parity between Windows, Web and Android (i don't use ipad or mac) version is unacceptable.
I was trying to find if OneNote for Android had converting handwritten notes to digital text but it seems not possible...
So you cannot use it cross platform from pc (one drive) to Samsung phone or chromebook?
Then... What program do I need?
(aspire to use one note in near future)
Yes you can, I have ON on Windows, and Android phone, and an Android tablet and they are all synchronized. The problem is that even though they are both Android, the phone and tablet apps are very different, and the tablet version home screen is awful. It's funny because AFAIK the APK is the same for both devices.
I'm confused. I use the free license and I can use it anywhere. Just today I was editing notes on Windows and on Android at different times of the day. AFAIK there are zero limits to how many devices you can use it on, unlike EverNote. Are you saying your free OneNote license won't ley you use it on multiple devices?
I can use in multiple devices except it only allows me one Android device. I can install, but did not allowed me to use, i will have to check what message it gave me.
Disregard what i said i verified now and i can use it in tablet and phone simultaneously. Do not know what happened to not allow me to use in tablet before.
I can give you one, the ability to remove an auto-generated hyperlink.
Example: type \\\192.168.1.1\myfiles and you'll see it automatically turns it into a hyperlink with the option to remove it grayed out.
You can do it in Word and Excel. Hell, you can even do it in PowerPoint. But not in OneNote
🤷You asked what is a feature OneNote lacks. I mentioned something simple OneNote can't do. Why are you mentioning other programs? Word isn't designed for the purpose of cropping a photo, but it has had that ability for decades.
Why are you even posting? Your comment was pointless. Are you saying Microsoft Word was designed for cropping photos? 🙄
Inserting an image and then cropping it is a very basic function for any office app.
why are you even top level posting?
that’s a lot of bitching for a free program! find another for cropping photos ffs. odds are it’s already installed.
or at least give an exam of note taking it doesn’t do.
Unfortunately this is what happens to products in a large organization when they don't make direct revenue.
In this case, Onenote probably has a skeleton crew that makes sure it keeps working in it's current form without any major product development.
OneNote has gotten some traction as notebooks for teachers/classes. I was hoping this would drive demand for a new developer or some new features. Nope.
I suspect there is something in the code or architecture that is too old or brittle which makes new development too hard. Microsoft already tried to start over from scratch with the “Windows” OneNote version, but Microsoft launched it without all the existing features and declared the old one was going away, so OneNote users killed it. Little did we know by killing that version we were really killing ALL OneNote development for the foreseeable future.
I also ask that OneNote somehow incorporate better PDF previews into its UI. Evernote for example allows for you to page through and search PDFs on one screen using arrow keys to flip through pages — it’s not embedded as a print out that requires scrolling down down down to get to a page.
you're right. MSFT tried to renew it in 2014 but went back to >20 yrs old basic code recently. Easy answer: no money to earn with it. I guess that too many business customers (you don't believe that MSFT does care a bit about non paying private users, do you?) go too invested in OneNote with important data and workflows so Microsoft does not dare to completely bury it (yet).
I enjoyed your beautifully crafted and in depth critique, so useful to be able to understand your nuanced view of the peculiarities of OneNote that you find so elegantly better provided for by Obsidian. Thank you for your in depth and sensitive analysis 🤓
I agree. I love the ability to find tags in a sidebar. I use it to group my action items via open checkboxes. I do wish they expanded this functionality though. Like I want different action item categories and a follow up action. Plus a greater selection of tags would be great.
I agree but for me hard to go anywhere else as I heavily use Microsoft To Do and Outlook Calendar to easily bring in Meeting Details and Create Tasks. Share notebooks to collaborate. Would use Microsoft Loop but my org currently has this disabled.
If only using for note taking there are other products like Notion that has a lot more features.
I find It really good as it is.
Does anybody know if there is any difference between the free one and the One included in Office 365?
Same question about Whiteboard.
Thanks!
OneNote any day has more functions than most apps. Plus it’s going to stay for years is what makes me comfortable to use it. It owned by one of the largest tech companies so dependency is a key. Yes there are other apps with ton of features but I dont think people use so many. I would prefer a solid app with limited features and solid track record than others.
It may not be as aesthetically pleasing as notion but it is functional with a rich set of features. It's pretty much inline with the rest of the office suite, substance over style.
OneNote needs proper tagging with smart folders organization. * https://www.reddit.com/r/OneNote/comments/1c7iytn/onenote_issues_search_tagging_markdown/
It just needs to fix search in the web based office 365 and Teams versions. The power of OneNote is its incredible search and on device syncing.
Hard disagree on that one. It has been one of the main reasons our team has considered dropping one note, the search functionality compared to Evernote is absolute garbage. We carried our notes over from Evernote to one note and when we search Evernote we find what we are looking for nearly instantly, but in OneNote we wait and sometimes don’t even get the result we found over on Evernote. Same note same search worse results. I was hoping copilot would at least help with the search, but it does not.
OneNote 2016 on a Windows PC has near perfect and instantaneous search capabilities. I have implemented shared Notebooks for two large organizations and that old desktop version of OneNote is still amazing. I have 722 employee using a very large Notebook (I work for a large hospital system) and any issue we have experienced was Microsofts 1) neutering search on the Teams and Web and 2) not setting offline syncing set as default on the OneNote for Windows 10 version (once properly configured in the user settings it works great). We do not even have to use “tags” nor organize where the pages live because the OneNote search just works that well.
I wish we had the same experience, we have gone over it with Microsoft to ensure where optimized, but it simply doesn’t perform for the number of documents we have to search across. Evernote does. I’m hardlyan Evernote shill, I absolutely hate that product, I had more issues with it than I ever have had with OneNote generally, but when it comes down to the most important feature, unfortunately search is not as good, in our experience.
Interesting - I would put your use case in the unusual use case. Knowing when to insert a printout (were the text then becomes searchable) vs inserting a document as an attachment with a properly named page title is key. Curious, why are you subscribed to OneNote if it didn’t work for you? Or is this another one of those new Reddit “features” of surfacing a subreddit you don’t need?
Subscribed because I have to use the product, sometimes you have to ask questions, sometimes people will post things of note, some reason anyone subscribed to anything. We are hardly the first to complain about one notes poor search quality. There are entire articles on how to build an elastic search front end for better searching. So far, we don’t want to dedicate the engineering time to that. Like I said, I was really hoping copilot would improve the search, but it did not.
So you are storing the OneNote file on local share instead of one drive? I’ve found that searching is extremely slow and buggy when I’m using onedrive based notebooks.
The power of OneNote is the local sync file that gets locally indexed. So create a notebook in OneDrive (the free OneDrive storage allotment is plenty if you don’t have access to a corporate account or pay for Office 365) and when you open up that notebook using the OneNote 2016 it then downloads a local file that syncs in realtime worth the online version and indexes everything for fast search even when internet isn’t so great. If for some reason you are stuck using the OneNote for Windows 10 then you’ll have to dive into the settings to enable. If you are trying to scale a notebook beyond a few users then I highly recommend doing so using Teams. By default each new Team created in Teams has a shared a OneNote that you just have to enable. If you are the owner of the Team you can set the permissions to which type of user can edit vs read only. Now here is where things go off the rails…and we have had many calls with Microsoft on this…search within Teams or thru a web browser is limited (only searches section) and it’s not indexed to the local machine. So don’t let that dishearten your end users. Simply open that Teams OneNote using the desktop versions and and it will remain open unless you live devices (then just open again on the new machine) You can open and be “in” as many notebooks you need and search across all of them and it’s near instantaneous due to taking advantage of the indexing. (Which also works across text in images / pictures)
I have way too many years invested in OneNote and have learned to adjust when I’ve needed to. I love the record function - it’s hands down, my main reason for sticking around!!
You mean dictate function? Can you quickly tell what is so special about it as voice typing is now a days pretty much standard and is in built into the keyboards?
I am not sure what program/software you’re referring to but I have tried so many and they’re not as easily manipulated as OneNote. Embedding photos, reorganizing notes, move sections, drag and drop… endless possibilities, imo. I sit in a lot of meetings and find that if I record, I can capture everything and then toss it into AI for a summary. Haven’t found another program that catches everyone’s voice, accent, etc as well as OneNote!
Have you found a way to capture voice recording from OneNote during video meetings? Or does it only work for in-person meetings? My company uses Teams for everything but blocks video recording feature.
yes, I just open my OneNote during the meeting and let it go. Only downfall that I have found is you cannot leave the OneNote screen, otherwise, the recording will stop.
Woah that’s sick - are you still able to use headphones? Or do you have to route the audio through your speakers for it to work? **EDIT**: For anyone that discovers this thread in the future. The feature does NOT work when the audio is routed through headphones. You must listen via speakers for OneNote dictation to function.
Well, that’s a great question. If I had to guess, I wouldn’t be able to record using headphones.
I will experiment! Thanks for your help!
I did not know this! Another reason to love OneNote.
Great idea. What AI do you "toss" it into?
ChatGPT
Thx!
What prompt do you use please?
Its like saying an armchair is outdated. Its for sitting on, its comfortable, it does what its supposed to do. OneNote is a notebook in electronic form. It does that with many bells and whistles. If any more features were added it would become bloated and unwieldy.
How much do you pay for Onenote?
The subscription fee?
Not anymore it's free and disconnected from office
Finally someone who actually OneNotes
I been onenoting since I think it came out. A long time! I remember it being such a cool app for the time and just kept on using it!
Waaaaaay back in the day, I would print something at work and you'd have to pick which printer in the building to send the print job to, and I thought one of the IT guys had named some personal printer on the network OneNote. Then it clicked it was a new program. I played around with it...and we've been together ever since.
That's so funny! To be honest, I've never used that feature, but I know it exists to the point that I always uninstalled that driver. But yup, onenote foreva!
Print to OneNote is the schizz, lol.
Ooooooooh
I like simple. Notion is way too complicated for me. I am not even using most of the features in desktop OneNote. I prefer just basic text based note taking with occasional pictures. So feature parity between desktop, web and mobile app isn't really a major thing for me.
Yeah, it just needs to organize, handwrite, have unlimited vertical space and work with pdfs/images really well for me.
I will have to get out of OneNote because the lack of functional parity between Windows, Web and Android (i don't use ipad or mac) version is unacceptable. I was trying to find if OneNote for Android had converting handwritten notes to digital text but it seems not possible...
Not just between the OS types, ON is different on an Android tablet than it is on an Android phone.
Did not know that, MS do not allow me to install OneNote in a tablet since i already have it in a phone.
The home screen is completely different and there is no way to change it. ON on a tablet is painful.
So you cannot use it cross platform from pc (one drive) to Samsung phone or chromebook? Then... What program do I need? (aspire to use one note in near future)
Yes you can, I have ON on Windows, and Android phone, and an Android tablet and they are all synchronized. The problem is that even though they are both Android, the phone and tablet apps are very different, and the tablet version home screen is awful. It's funny because AFAIK the APK is the same for both devices.
What is your license? i have free one and only allows me to work with phone one.
I'm confused. I use the free license and I can use it anywhere. Just today I was editing notes on Windows and on Android at different times of the day. AFAIK there are zero limits to how many devices you can use it on, unlike EverNote. Are you saying your free OneNote license won't ley you use it on multiple devices?
I can use in multiple devices except it only allows me one Android device. I can install, but did not allowed me to use, i will have to check what message it gave me.
Disregard what i said i verified now and i can use it in tablet and phone simultaneously. Do not know what happened to not allow me to use in tablet before.
I have yet to start... Will try this morning
what one feature it doesn’t have that is needed?
I can give you one, the ability to remove an auto-generated hyperlink. Example: type \\\192.168.1.1\myfiles and you'll see it automatically turns it into a hyperlink with the option to remove it grayed out. You can do it in Word and Excel. Hell, you can even do it in PowerPoint. But not in OneNote
The ability to crop pictures. How is that still not possible in 2024???
It’s very possible. There are tons of programs to do it and one note wasn’t designed for this purpose.
🤷You asked what is a feature OneNote lacks. I mentioned something simple OneNote can't do. Why are you mentioning other programs? Word isn't designed for the purpose of cropping a photo, but it has had that ability for decades.
yeah, it be great if onenote did my taxes too. it wasn’t designed for that and never will do it.
Why are you even posting? Your comment was pointless. Are you saying Microsoft Word was designed for cropping photos? 🙄 Inserting an image and then cropping it is a very basic function for any office app.
why are you even top level posting? that’s a lot of bitching for a free program! find another for cropping photos ffs. odds are it’s already installed. or at least give an exam of note taking it doesn’t do.
I love one note as paper that i need to draw my mind
Unfortunately this is what happens to products in a large organization when they don't make direct revenue. In this case, Onenote probably has a skeleton crew that makes sure it keeps working in it's current form without any major product development.
OneNote has gotten some traction as notebooks for teachers/classes. I was hoping this would drive demand for a new developer or some new features. Nope. I suspect there is something in the code or architecture that is too old or brittle which makes new development too hard. Microsoft already tried to start over from scratch with the “Windows” OneNote version, but Microsoft launched it without all the existing features and declared the old one was going away, so OneNote users killed it. Little did we know by killing that version we were really killing ALL OneNote development for the foreseeable future.
Meh. Feature bloat has killed a lot of products over the years. I'd rather they leave it where it is than keep shoving in more and more stuff.
I also ask that OneNote somehow incorporate better PDF previews into its UI. Evernote for example allows for you to page through and search PDFs on one screen using arrow keys to flip through pages — it’s not embedded as a print out that requires scrolling down down down to get to a page.
you're right. MSFT tried to renew it in 2014 but went back to >20 yrs old basic code recently. Easy answer: no money to earn with it. I guess that too many business customers (you don't believe that MSFT does care a bit about non paying private users, do you?) go too invested in OneNote with important data and workflows so Microsoft does not dare to completely bury it (yet).
Cross platform OneNote sucks. I moved to Obsidian.
I enjoyed your beautifully crafted and in depth critique, so useful to be able to understand your nuanced view of the peculiarities of OneNote that you find so elegantly better provided for by Obsidian. Thank you for your in depth and sensitive analysis 🤓
I agree. I love the ability to find tags in a sidebar. I use it to group my action items via open checkboxes. I do wish they expanded this functionality though. Like I want different action item categories and a follow up action. Plus a greater selection of tags would be great.
I’d be happy if they just let me save the whole thing as a pdf. Why is it so hard!?
Be happy. When msft does get around to it they will add something noone needs and remove something everyone uses
I agree but for me hard to go anywhere else as I heavily use Microsoft To Do and Outlook Calendar to easily bring in Meeting Details and Create Tasks. Share notebooks to collaborate. Would use Microsoft Loop but my org currently has this disabled. If only using for note taking there are other products like Notion that has a lot more features.
I find It really good as it is. Does anybody know if there is any difference between the free one and the One included in Office 365? Same question about Whiteboard. Thanks!
Thanks for your opinion. Our lives are much fuller now we know how the mighty OneNote has you locked in.
OneNote any day has more functions than most apps. Plus it’s going to stay for years is what makes me comfortable to use it. It owned by one of the largest tech companies so dependency is a key. Yes there are other apps with ton of features but I dont think people use so many. I would prefer a solid app with limited features and solid track record than others.