CaptainTime

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Just found and viewed this very good video intro/tutorial to OneNote:

OneNote Tutorial by PCClassesOnline.com (YouTube)

 

I highly recommend it.  I found it to be the quickest way to get a basic understanding of OneNote, including its structure of Notebooks > Sections > Pages

 

Two Key Differences between Evernote and OneNote:

1. Web Clipping
   1. EN is much better, providing many options, clips text of full page, article, simplfied article, and selection
   2. ON clips ONLY an image of the full page -- no options to clip web page text
2. Tags
   1. EN is much better, allowing you to easily create, select, and SEARCH on tags.
   2. ON has a preset selection of tags, but Tags are NOT searchable!!!

 

EDIT:  For comparison, here is the Evernote Tutorial by PCClassesOnline

 

Just thought I would throw in my 2 cents worth. I have been an Evernote premium subscriber for several years, using the Windows and Android applications and with a current database of around 3,500 notes. Recently, I decided to try out Onenote due to ongoing concerns and frustrations. Most of these have been expressed eloquently by others but in particular, the seeming inability of Evernote to handle high DPI displays (renders text incredibly small on both the screen and web clippings), lack of improvement in editing capabilities (I gave up trying to edit notes in Android because it would just ruin formatting created in the Windows version) and apparent problems that other users with larger databases than mine are having with scale, made me reconsider whether it was wise to continue to rely as heavily on Evernote as I do. As others have pointed out, if there was a roadmap which provided a sense of when such fundamental issues (to me) would be addressed, then there would be a much higher likelihood of remaining patient, because there is a lot to like about the product. However, in the absence of such information I decided to explore alternatives and have been testing out Onenote 2013 for the past few weeks.

 

These are my general observations so far:

 

1. I was able to transfer across my database of notes from Evernote to Onenote fairly seamlessly using a product called Evernote2Onenote. As pointed out in the PCClassesOnline.com video, Onenote uses a Notebook>Section>Page structure and Tags are descriptors only. And, as JMichael points out, you can't sort on Tags in Onenote the way you can in Evernote, which would appear to be a fairly big disadvantage. However, the way Evernote2Onenote converted my notes in Onenote was to create a separate Section for each Tag. So, notes tagged with (say) 'Family' in Evernote came across into Onenote in a Section called 'Family'. Instead of clicking on the Tag 'Family' in Evernote, I just click on the Section 'Family' in Onenote and get exactly the same notes appearing as I would in Evernote viewing the Tag 'Family'. So, in practice, the additional layer of structure in Onenote (ie 'Section) appears to allow you to have most of the sort capabilities of Tags in Evernote. However, while this works quite well for individual Tag items, multiple Tags are more problematical as it would appear you have to copy the note to each specific Section if you want it to appear in a sort of that Section.

 

2. As JMichael notes, Evernote is definitely superior at Web Clipping. There is a web clipper available for Chrome and it is also possible to forward emails from GMail to Onenote using 'me@onenote.com. However, both of these functions bring the clipping across as an image, which is not always ideal. However, there is another product called 'bringtoonenote' which does allow you to bring across web clippings as editable text and appears to work reasonably well, based on my experience. So, while not as good or as flexible as the Evernote offerings, there are workable solutions in Onenote if you do a lot of web clipping.

 

3. Perhaps unsurprisingly, where I find Onenote to be far superior to Evernote is in editing notes. I tend to edit my notes a lot and make use of templates and ultimately gave up trying to edit notes in Android which were created in the Windows client because the formatting would be destroyed. I find it a joy to be able to create a note in Onenote in the Windows client, edit this note in Android and then find that the edits done in Android are perfectly captured when I access the note again from the Windows client. I simply couldn't do this in Evernote and it has made a big difference to how I work.

 

I am intending to continue experimenting with Onenote for the next several weeks. It is not a perfect program and i find it a little unwieldy to navigate around. However, it feels like a solid application (to me, more solid than Evernote is at the moment) and if you like to edit your notes across platforms then it has some definite advantages. 

 

Just to add my experience. Since the removal of the ability to share notebooks (later added back in) my trust in Evernote was broken. So I started to try Onenote to create my coaching manuals in.

I agree overall with the assessment here of the differences.

OneNote is much better at formatting notes and handling pictures and tables. The web clipping is not as good. I will definitely look into the bring to one note extension you suggested.

So far, I haven't found a nice vibrant forum for OneNote yet, but overall I am leaning towards moving entirely to OneNote.

There are lots of note taking alternatives in either Windows and Mac environments but there are very few alternatives that are truly cross platform with versions for Windows/Android/Mac/iOS. 

I am a Windows user, but I like the idea that if I ever changed to a Mac I could still access my Evernote auxiliary brain. I have looked at some truly nice note taking programs for Windows, but many don't support Android as well and very few support as many operating systems as Evernote.

OneNote is unfortunately almost the only contender for cross-platform that I know about.

Here is a Zapier "zap" that will do this for you:

https://zapier.com/zapbook/evernote/wordpress/18934/evernote-new-note-to-wordpress-create-post/

Not a lot of choices unfortunately that are as cross-platform as Evernote. Springpad shut down. Probably the Evernote forum is not the best place to find alternatives either. I would suggest some other software or productivity forums.

I don't have a problem with auto renew, but I do want to receive a notice a few weeks ahead so that I can ensure funds are in place or cancel it if I no longer need it. Many companies do provide this and I agree it is a courteous thing to do.

Very glad that they listened and rolled this feature back, but I am concerned it and other features I use everyday could disappear in future. The shared note features is one of my primary reasons for using Evernote and I had hoped to expand this to notebooks of my training content.

But now I am hesitant to write the content in Evenote if I won't be able to share the notebook I am creating it in.

I use the public note link a lot but not the notebook one as of yet. I had high hopes of the possibility of using Evernote to publish many of my courses online - was just waiting for the ability to control the order of notes when sharing. But now that they have pulled the shared notebook feature, there goes that dream.

Unfortunate as there were many people who put a lot of work curating and creating content into Evernote Notebooks and sharing them with us and now all their work is down the drain.

Actually I am using 5.4.1.3962 Public (non-beta) and Ctrl+Shift+h works for me as well.

+1. I would also really like it if it kept the sort order when I shared the notebook. This would make Evernote an awesome publishing tool. The inability to control the order of notes when sharing is the only thing holding me back from publishing my time management training manuals using Evernote.

The problem with Tags is they can get out of control.  You end up with so many of them you forget what  your options were.  I know this can be quelled through planning but they are so easy to create by accident the list becomes unweildy.  Plus they have no context.  Nesting notebooks give specific context tags cannot.

 

I learned this trying to implement the The Secret Weapon setup.  It made perfect sense until you have to do extensive tag management.  I loved it because it played to my need to over organize, which is my biggest fault.  The goal is to keep this simple and a hierarchy to guide you is the only real way to do this.

I was thinking of this differently. If you have a fault that you tend to over organize, then simple using tags helps keep it simpler. The hierarchy is the complex part. Or trying to over organize by creating a tag hierarchy is also complex. I almost never have problems finding notes with search and simple tags. I have stopped using the Notebook hierarchy as a way to find things except where I am sharing a whole notebook with a client or student.

Yes, I do end up with many tags, but it is easy to find the one you want as they show up when you start typing. And if I created 2-3 different ways of tagging the same thing, it is easy to review my tag list and retag some note and remove tags. 

Certainly this takes less time than trying to have a tag hierarchy.

I am in favor of "free range" tags.

 

 

If there was a Linux version of EN, I might give Linux a go again.

 

 

Are you serious? You're avoiding to switch to a brilliant OS with the highest levels of control, just because of an app? You're sacrificing the OS because of an app, even a worthy one? It's like you say "I want to change my ordinary car with a luxurious one, but I really like my key chain, so no, until Ferrari makes a key chain like mine, I don't change my car"! OS is much much more important than some apps, the impact of a great OS (like Linux, especially if the distribution of your choice is a great one like Linux Mint which combines beauty and functionality) on your life is much more significant than a single or a bunch of apps. By the way, I noticed some days earlier that although I make a lot of notes with Evernote, I rarely use my notes (because I usually do a web search and in most cases, the first found item is the one containing my previous note). In addition, you can still have the Evernote's web clipper extension installed on all your browsers and use it for some of your notes which are pertaining to the web.

 

You can have both  Win and Linux side by side without any problem, like what I'm doing (I have 5 OSes installed on my laptop, and I use all of them), and whenever I need an app that's installed on my windows, I simply reboot to Win. I suggest trying Linux Mint 15 64bit (with Cinnamon), you'll certainly fall in love with it after a while, that's what happened to me too. There are some apps, tools, and functionalities in Linux that you can't find on any other OS, and they really help to increase your productivity.

 

Highest levels of control does not necessarily equal the best OS for everyone's needs.And, as far as useage goes, Evernote is much more than a  key chain relative to acar - it is probably the app I spend 20% of my time in - so 1/5 of a car. Perhaps like the decision to go electric, gas or steam in your car.

Just because it is a business decision doesn't mean people can't try to change that by showing more support for it. Plenty of companies stated they wouldn't develop a product and then decided to hop in the market. Office on the IOS for example. 

True. I do think it is worthwhile for Linux users to weigh in and show their interest. I was playing with the idea of trying Linux again myself since so much of my software is web based now. But I don't want to work fully in the web interface for Evernote. I haven't spent much time in the web interface and looked at it tonight. It wasn't bad, but I like more control over the interface as I usually don't show the left pane so I can see more text on each note.

If there was a Linux version of EN, I might give Linux a go again.

A couple of things to note:

 

A notebook only contains notes, not stacks and not other notebooks.

A stack contains only notebooks, and not other stacks or notes.

A note belongs to exactly one notebook, but may have multiple tags.

 

Notebooks are the coin of the realm when it comes to sharing groups of notes, keeping local notes (notes that are not synced to the Evernote server, for desktop apps) and offline notes (notes that are always available on mobile devices, even when you're not connected to the internet -- a premium feature). You can only use these facilities using notebooks, and not stacks or arbitrary groups of notes. Consider only creating notebooks when you must.

 

Searches have essentially three contexts: a single notebook, a single stack, or all notes (some clients allow you to search "personal" only or "business" only notes, but that's just behind-the scenes flim-flammery -- I'm talking about searches that use the search language, including saved searches). You can only have one context per search: either a single notebook or a single stack; otherwise it's all notes. Since stacks can hold multiple notebooks, that's the only way that you can search a strict subset of your notebooks at one time. Note that you cannot search for notes *not* in a particular notebook or stack.

 

Tags go across notebooks. This gives them a lot of flexibility in terms of categorization, since multiple tags can apply to any single note. You can also search for notes that do not have a particular tag. Note that the tag hierarchy is for organization only; tag searches do not take into consideration a tag's sub-tags when searching.

Great explanation, Jeff.

I should mention that I was really frustrated with the lack of hierarchical structure with Evernote when I first started, but once I fully embraced tags, I realized that I could find any note faster by good use of tags than by drilling down through the hierarchy. Now I am actually thinking I can make do with less notebooks and more tags.

You can also post to Wordpress via email so perhaps you could write in Evernote and then use the Share/Email command to get it to the email address you chose.

Here is info on posting to Wordpress via email:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_to_your_blog_using_email

One caution as I teach Wordpress and Internet marketing for a living. Evernote doesn't use heading 1, heading 2, etc which are important for search engine optimization. So I recommend you write in Evernote and the copy and paste it into Wordpress and set the heading levels yourself. This will help your ranking in search engines.

There are many products that only work on either Mac or Windows and we don't demonize those companies. It is up to a company to decide what operating systems they want their product to work on.

Wikipedia shows the following percentages of users for various operating systems as of Aug 2013

Windows - 90.81%

OS X - 7.26%

Linux - 1.52%

At the moment, there are still more Windows Vista users than Linux users and we don't force companies to create software for Windows Vista.  I like that Linux is an option but it is just not cost effective to develop software for an operating system used by so few people.

Choosing Linux as an operating system and complaining about software availability is like living on an Island and complaining about ferry costs.

Here is a plugin that might help. I haven't tried it myself.

http://wordpress.org/plugins/everpress/

I often use Evernote to hold my research for articles, but I actually write my blog posts offline using Windows Live Writer which then publishes to my various Wordpress sites.

Try Mural.ly. Not quite a mind map but has much of the functionality. And it integrates with Evernote.

Have a look at Mural.ly. They are not quite a mind map - more like a visual corkboard/flow chart but they could be used as a mind map and they integrate with Evernote.

I am an Xmind user (Windows) but haven't tried any integration with Evernote. Like you , I use mind maps for brainstorming new project ideas. I also use it to take notes when coaching clients. I use Evernote for general filing, resource library and research.