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Evernote vs. OneNote


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I was going through my web feeds tonight and came across this article on on pocketnow entitled 8 Ways OneNote is Better than Evernote. I'm not familiar with OneNote so can't say for sure which is the better tool but only got as far as Item 1 which, as you can see from the comment, is just plain wrong. I couldn't be bothered to go over the other claims but wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on how OneNote and Evernote stack up?

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Cheers

Mark

www.reallifeselling.com

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Which version depends on your needs.

 

Some people want to have multi-client capability (Windows and Mac).

Others want multi-device capability (desktop, mobile, pad).

 

Because I only use Windows and can't fit my 25,000+ notes on my smart phone, I use Evernote solely on a desktop.

Either Evernote or OneNote would be fine for my needs.

 

 

p.s. Point 3. in the article is important  - OneNote is better for simultaneous collaboration

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I use both. Mainly because my corporate network has blocked SkyDrive and the ability to open OneNote notebooks from any cloud services. I think the note taking features on OneNote are much better. Being able to add text anywhere instead of just vertically is very nice. Only way to do that with Evernote is to format it in another program and copy and paste or use the archaic barely functional table tool.

 

I also like the Windows +S screen capture in OneNote Clipper. I don't have to open up another application to capture and markup screenshots.

 

I like Evernote because It's pretty much the same experience across each device,  I can use it pretty much anywhere and the tagging is much more powerful.

If Evernote allowed similar functionality to OneNote where you could have individual text boxes anywhere, I would dump OneNote all together. As of right now, to get a more aesthetically pleasing note, I have to use OneNote.

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That guy is using a Windows 8 tablet. Any opinion he has is immediately suspect :) Just kidding……but not really :)

 

I have used both quite a bit. They both do great things, and do things differently. For that specific article, he wrote about HE uses a note taking program, and why OneNote works better for him.

 

I use a note taking program very, very differently, so many of his points are meaningless to me. I could easily write an article with the top 10 points on why EN works better for me.

 

A couple things that I don’t agree with:

 

Point 1: Interesting. I have a note with a JPG, audio file, text and a web clipping in it. DIdn't know I couldn't do that :)

 

Point 5. The thing I don’t like about OneNote is that it forces you to use its organizational structure. Where as EN will almost let you do whatever you want, with the exception of doing dead tree type stacks, if that is your thing, which can still be done in tags. Anyway, OneNotes structure seems to make sense at first, until you start getting either a lot of notebooks, or a lot of notes in one notebook. I can go on and on, but the point is you are forced to organize the way it is set up. I used EN for a LONG time before I came across other organizational structures that were not immediately obvious to me (ie. I learned from other people).

 

Point 7: Better searching? Really? I find exactly the opposite and like EN better for searching. No problems with hand written text as mentioned there. I think it is funny that he mentioned Windows search, for two reasons. 1) I can’t get Windows search to find a file on my desktop!!! It is horrible, I can’t believe windows can not implement a good search function. 2) It was available, but it isn’t in Windows 8? Well then, how is that feature?

 

With that, there are some things I do like about OneNote. For one, it does seem to be a more “graphical” program, if that makes any sense. EN seems like more of a straight line of text, with some formatting. OneNote seems like you can do a lot more stuff with placing graphics, layouts, and different looks. Like you could almost “present” from a note. I kind of missed that when I first moved from OneNote to EN. However, in the long run, that is not how I used a notetaking program. I use it to store information, and use other programs to create presentations, flowcharts, etc, instead of trying to do everything in one program.

 

Since everyone is different, and has a different set of needs, this could easily be a “Ford versus Chevy” debate that never has a winner, because there is no right answer :) Great article for things to think about, but it also leaves out a lot of features that EN is capable of.

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If you're in the market for a note-taking app then OneNote is worth a look.  If you're currently using Evernote and it's working for you - why would you worry about other apps?  I'm with @jefito on this one..

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  • 1 month later...

I've been an enthusiastic Evernote user for about 2 years now, but am working in an office where the Operations Mgr has wanted the ability to have more integrated processes and collaboration including Outlook's scheduling capabilities, document sharing, etc.  I must admit, I resisted the notion...as I said, I've been enthusiastic about Evernote.

 

But now I've been working with OneNote (2010) for the past couple of months and there certainly is a lot to like about it as well.  I find myself torn between two really good products.  On the one hand, I find Evernote more visually appealing..I like being able to look at my lists and see visual representations of content...images of recipes, people, houses, webpages, etc, make it so easy at a glance to find what I'm looking for.  And being an "organization" junkie, I've managed to keep my notes and stacks well constructed so I can quickly find what I need.  And Evernote is very good at keeping its "desktop" very consistent between devices...so whether I'm online, on my own computer, on my tablet, or on my phone, what I find and where I find it remains very consistent.

 

On the other hand, once I wrapped my brain around OneNote's "lay of the land" (ie, Books, Sections (I think of them as Chapters in those books), and Pages), I find myself much preferring the organizational structure of OneNote.  I'm also not a fan of Skydrive, which is our best option right now for syncing and online work.  As to integration with Outlook...for contacts, scheduling, email, etc., OneNote is fabulous!  

 

I would love to be at a point where I would only be using one product, but for the time being (still fairly new in the OneNote arena) I find I am quite comfortable using OneNote for our business...but Evernote still seems to be my "go to" app for personal.  

 

One other point of info....the folks at Evernote have made it easy to get OneNote notes imported to Evernote.  However, Microsoft has not, at least as of yet, returned the favor.  Getting notes from Evernote to OneNote is a challenge.  I have tried apps for that, but have not yet been impressed.

 

By the way, I use both Evernote and OneNote on pc, Android phone, and Android tablet.  Setting up sync was a snap with Evernote, not as intuitive at the start for OneNote...though once set up, it does seem to work beautifully as well!  I do love having access to all this content on all my devices (or online if need be!)

 

Looking forward to other perspectives.

 

Judi

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Not sure what you;re expecting from this thread.  I don't plan on endlessly agonising over which solution I'm going to use,  nor do I expect to evangelise (in the Biblical sense) for or against a specific app.  I chose Evernote.  If you prefer to use,  or have to use OneNote,  then go with that.  There are numerous decision engines available if you need help with the decision - my favourite is called "8-ball".  You shake it and it tells you 'yes' or 'no'.  You just have to be careful what question you ask...

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I've been an enthusiastic Evernote user for about 2 years now, but am working in an office where the Operations Mgr has wanted the ability to have more integrated processes and collaboration including Outlook's scheduling capabilities, document sharing, etc.  I must admit, I resisted the notion...as I said, I've been enthusiastic about Evernote.

 

But now I've been working with OneNote (2010) for the past couple of months and there certainly is a lot to like about it as well.  I find myself torn between two really good products.  On the one hand, I find Evernote more visually appealing..I like being able to look at my lists and see visual representations of content...images of recipes, people, houses, webpages, etc, make it so easy at a glance to find what I'm looking for.  And being an "organization" junkie, I've managed to keep my notes and stacks well constructed so I can quickly find what I need.  And Evernote is very good at keeping its "desktop" very consistent between devices...so whether I'm online, on my own computer, on my tablet, or on my phone, what I find and where I find it remains very consistent.

 

On the other hand, once I wrapped my brain around OneNote's "lay of the land" (ie, Books, Sections (I think of them as Chapters in those books), and Pages), I find myself much preferring the organizational structure of OneNote.  I'm also not a fan of Skydrive, which is our best option right now for syncing and online work.  As to integration with Outlook...for contacts, scheduling, email, etc., OneNote is fabulous!  

 

I would love to be at a point where I would only be using one product, but for the time being (still fairly new in the OneNote arena) I find I am quite comfortable using OneNote for our business...but Evernote still seems to be my "go to" app for personal.  

 

One other point of info....the folks at Evernote have made it easy to get OneNote notes imported to Evernote.  However, Microsoft has not, at least as of yet, returned the favor.  Getting notes from Evernote to OneNote is a challenge.  I have tried apps for that, but have not yet been impressed.

 

By the way, I use both Evernote and OneNote on pc, Android phone, and Android tablet.  Setting up sync was a snap with Evernote, not as intuitive at the start for OneNote...though once set up, it does seem to work beautifully as well!  I do love having access to all this content on all my devices (or online if need be!)

 

Looking forward to other perspectives.

 

Judi

There are a few threads already comparing the two. Please use the search function if you care to read them.

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....

By the way, I use both Evernote and OneNote on pc, Android phone, and Android tablet.  Setting up sync was a snap with Evernote, not as intuitive at the start for OneNote...though once set up, it does seem to work beautifully as well!  I do love having access to all this content on all my devices (or online if need be!)

 

Looking forward to other perspectives.

 

Judi

 

Thanks for sharing your perspective and experiences with both programs.

User comments such as what you added are important for a well-balanced forum.

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  • 1 month later...

I appreciate the thread as well. to @gazumped point, I don't think anyone needs to swoop in and defend anything but to drop experiences using both and their workflow. Just part of the standard reexamination that happens with users and sometimes further prompted by uncomfortable changes with one product and people wondering if they would be better off elsewhere.

 

I am also now at that crossroads where the Office 365 with OneNote pricing looks attractive and the recent changes here at EN has broken my workflow and ability to work productively and transparently (IMHO EN worked best when noticed least and the new Clipper and Desktop clients were too buggy and designed with marketing in mind). 

 

I was an original OneNote user and always missed the graphic superiority (how you could lay down notes, not necessarily the UI), but hated the way I was trapped by it to a single desktop location. I find the thread balanced. I only wish that some more 365 users would comment about their experience with both and their workflow.

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I like Evernotes compact list views of notes very much. Every of my EN notebooks is a big list of webclips, bookmarks, home and work documents, todos, and so on.

 

Can't imagine a OneNote notebook with thousands of webclip notes for example. ;)

 

Evernote is my clear winner over OneNote regarding compact list view of notes vs. complex structured view of notes.

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It's up to everyone,  I think,  to carry out their own due diligence,  decide which software works best for their individual preferences and use case,  and then just get on with it.  Being distracted by bells and whistles added to other software is totally non-productive. If you want to make sure you're using the best app,  check out the competition every 3-6 months or so.  Whatever works for you,  go with it...

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I've used both and have things I much prefer about both.  My perfect solution would be software that combined the best of both but I don't see that happening.  I was thinking about it yesterday and i honestly can't remember the last time either of them introduced a new feature that was exciting or meaningful to me.  I tested OneNote 2013 versus 2010 and there wasn't a single exciting new feature in the entire program, just some meaningless garbage.  Every time I look through the forums for both products I see hundreds of feature suggestions from users that would result in meaningful exciting improvements but they never get acted on, I guess once you get a certain size if you don't think 90% of users would want a feature, you don't add it.  Or maybe developers lose the excitement and love of the product that caused it to be developed in the first place.  Who knows.  All I know is meaningful development seems to stop.  Just my opinion at the moment, at least as it concerns these two programs.

 

One thing to know about OneNote is that in spite of its claims of multi-platform support, it is very weak and full of bugs.  EN has bugs too, but by and large, at least for me, multi-platform support "just works".  And when it comes to software, for me, that is everything.  When I tested OneNote 2013 with Android even doing something as simple as changing a notebooks name broke sync.  It was a typical complete Microsoft cluster*&*&.  I realized if I went back to OneNote and wanted to use it across all my devices I was going to spend more time fixing it than using it, so I stuck with EN for personal note taking.

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I was going through my web feeds tonight and came across this article on on pocketnow entitled 8 Ways OneNote is Better than Evernote. I'm not familiar with OneNote so can't say for sure which is the better tool but only got as far as Item 1 which, as you can see from the comment, is just plain wrong. I couldn't be bothered to go over the other claims but wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on how OneNote and Evernote stack up?

--

Cheers

Mark

www.reallifeselling.com

 

 

The fact that there are only two viable options for "multi platform" is surely an indication that "multiplatform" just isn't all that easy.  I use both ON & EN (please search the board for more info, if interested).  As Gaz said, it's up to each individual to do their own due diligence.  If ON works for you , then great!  If EN works for you, then great!  Or...if ON & EN both work for you, then great.  I've never, never been in the camp that says ON & EN cannot coexist. 

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It too bad that this needs to take place on the Evernote forum, but perhaps it will motivate them to improve.

 

I used Evernote for almost two years.  Liked it, but didn't love it.  I had a lot of problems with:

-formatting,

-copy/paste with screwy indents and widths,

-LOTS of whitespace lost on tablet app on the left side of notes,

-column width of note didn't automatically adjust to screen width forcing zoom or scroll to see everything

-searching for word is erased when you try to refine your search to a folder (should just leave it)

-messy organization...not very Apple like in having lots of stuff in the menu structures to dig through to get where you want to be

 

My final straw was having the apps in Android crash on occasion while loading a note.  When this happened, the note is DELETED!!!  I called.  They said I had to upgrade to Pro in order to restore previous history of the note.  This happened about 4 times.  That kind of program error that forces upgrades is not nice :(

 

I moved to OneNote because my son at a university said he was only using that now and loved it. I already owned it as a part of the programs I have (Office 2013), and found it to:

-be consistent and expected in formatting

-can copy and paste anything from anywhere into any note

-No whitespace when viewing note in app.  Funny, it feels more like an Apple concept in being very clean and simplistic but powerful.

-Notes automatically wrap text to screen size

-Search is what you expect

-Structure is even easier to navigate and faster for me.

 

I wouldn't tell anyone to leave Evernote if it is working for them.  I still think the app is good, but OneNote has definitely won me over.  I moved all my notes over in about 1 hour and haven't gone back to Evernote since.  Very happy with the OneNote apps on Win 8RT and Android (need Android 4+, I believe)

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It too bad that this needs to take place on the Evernote forum, but perhaps it will motivate them to improve.

 

I used Evernote for almost two years.  Liked it, but didn't love it.  I had a lot of problems with:

-formatting,

-copy/paste with screwy indents and widths,

-LOTS of whitespace lost on tablet app on the left side of notes,

-column width of note didn't automatically adjust to screen width forcing zoom or scroll to see everything

-searching for word is erased when you try to refine your search to a folder (should just leave it)

-messy organization...not very Apple like in having lots of stuff in the menu structures to dig through to get where you want to be

 

My final straw was having the apps in Android crash on occasion while loading a note.  When this happened, the note is DELETED!!!  I called.  They said I had to upgrade to Pro in order to restore previous history of the note.  This happened about 4 times.  That kind of program error that forces upgrades is not nice :(

 

I moved to OneNote because my son at a university said he was only using that now and loved it. I already owned it as a part of the programs I have (Office 2013), and found it to:

-be consistent and expected in formatting

-can copy and paste anything from anywhere into any note

-No whitespace when viewing note in app.  Funny, it feels more like an Apple concept in being very clean and simplistic but powerful.

-Notes automatically wrap text to screen size

-Search is what you expect

-Structure is even easier to navigate and faster for me.

 

I wouldn't tell anyone to leave Evernote if it is working for them.  I still think the app is good, but OneNote has definitely won me over.  I moved all my notes over in about 1 hour and haven't gone back to Evernote since.  Very happy with the OneNote apps on Win 8RT and Android (need Android 4+, I believe)

 

I'm glad to hear you found something that works for you! I think the developers will also appreciate the feedback. There is always room for improvement.

 

Personally, as a Mac user, I don't think much about OneNote. Even when I was using Windows, I didn't like it much. I guess I was never keen on getting locked into the platform. It is better nowadays because it is improving on mobile, but it has a long way to go, I think.

 

Anyhow, I was wondering what phone number you called. As far as I know, Evernote doesn't have one. There isn't a Pro version of Evernote either, so I am not sure who you were talking to or what they recommended. There is a Premium version, but it is exactly the same app as the Free version (you simply have more access to various features), so I doubt an upgrade would have solved any problems you were having with crashing. In my experience, Evernote definitely does not push its users to upgrade to Pro, and they are quite pleased if you choose to remain a Free user (it's a long story, but their business model is a little different than most companies).

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  • 2 weeks later...

One note is superior for one main reason:  you can organize your notes however you want.  In EN, you can organize by date, alphabetically, or but 2 or 3 other ways....and when you organize one notebook a certain way, ALL your notebooks are organized that way.  That simply does not work.

 

One note lets me organize each notebook how I want...I can drag and drop if I want.  And I can organize one notebook by alphabet, one by date, one by drag and drop...and each notebook in independent.

 

I want badly to like EN, but until they let me organize my notebooks the way I want, and not how they want, it will be an unused program and app.

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I have been using Evernote since 2011 on all platforms. But I have only heard good things about Onenote lately. I have the whole MS stack with phone, Office360 etc. The big issue I have now is that I can no longer update, uninstall or install Evernote desktop client anymore on my main home machine. Seems to be a common problem that the support  evernot can solve . So I think Ill import all my notes to OneNote and use that until there will be a robust installation program for Windows.

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I have been using Evernote since 2011 on all platforms. But I have only heard good things about Onenote lately. I have the whole MS stack with phone, Office360 etc. The big issue I have now is that I can no longer update, uninstall or install Evernote desktop client anymore on my main home machine. Seems to be a common problem that the support  evernot can solve . So I think Ill import all my notes to OneNote and use that until there will be a robust installation program for Windows.

 

Hi - the website you quote already gives a fix for the occasional problems that have arisen on Evernote installs / reinstalls.  There are more on the Forums here.  If you are still having issues,  please raise a support ticket and search this forum for fixes - you should be able to find a resolution pretty quickly. There's no known Windows "installation problem" so Evernote won't be issuing any updates in that area in the forseeable future.  

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I have been using Evernote since 2011 on all platforms. But I have only heard good things about Onenote lately. I have the whole MS stack with phone, Office360 etc. The big issue I have now is that I can no longer update, uninstall or install Evernote desktop client anymore on my main home machine. Seems to be a common problem that the support  evernot can solve . So I think Ill import all my notes to OneNote and use that until there will be a robust installation program for Windows.

 

Hi - the website you quote already gives a fix for the occasional problems that have arisen on Evernote installs / reinstalls.  There are more on the Forums here.  If you are still having issues,  please raise a support ticket and search this forum for fixes - you should be able to find a resolution pretty quickly. There's no known Windows "installation problem" so Evernote won't be issuing any updates in that area in the forseeable future.  

 

I was interested to see that someone else has been having problems installing the Evernote desktop client in Windows. Updates have been failing for me for a couple of months, which is part of what got me interested in this Outlook vs. Evernote thread initially.

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I have been using Evernote since 2011 on all platforms. But I have only heard good things about Onenote lately. I have the whole MS stack with phone, Office360 etc. The big issue I have now is that I can no longer update, uninstall or install Evernote desktop client anymore on my main home machine. Seems to be a common problem that the support  evernot can solve . So I think Ill import all my notes to OneNote and use that until there will be a robust installation program for Windows.

 

Hi - the website you quote already gives a fix for the occasional problems that have arisen on Evernote installs / reinstalls.  There are more on the Forums here.  If you are still having issues,  please raise a support ticket and search this forum for fixes - you should be able to find a resolution pretty quickly. There's no known Windows "installation problem" so Evernote won't be issuing any updates in that area in the forseeable future.  

 

I was interested to see that someone else has been having problems installing the Evernote desktop client in Windows. Updates have been failing for me for a couple of months, which is part of what got me interested in this Outlook vs. Evernote thread initially.

 

 

OK - as I said in the last post;  updates shouldn't be a routine problem.  There are occasional technical difficulties with all software (and don't get me started in Windows updates..) but Evernote isn't normally a bad experience.  You could try a full backup and Revo uninstall/ re-install (please search the forum for more specific instructions for your OS) but Support are probably your best bet - weekdays PT.

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Just thought I'd toss in my two cents about EN / ON. 

 

Every time I read about OneNote's "superior" organizing ability, I find myself scratching my head. Maybe if I had started out using ON instead of EN, the hierarchy would work for me, but I guess EN has ruined me for that sort of thing :)  

 

I tried using ON a few years ago, and it just doesn't fit with how my mind works, apparently. I LIKE Evernote's big scrolling list of notes, appropriately portioned up into notebooks and stacks (with tags thrown in just in case). One of my primary uses is as a daily work journal - I jot notes down about what I'm working on constantly throughout the day. This is part of how I think...typing out my random thoughts about my work helps me actually do my work.

 

Doing those kinds of notes in ON just didn't scale well. I tried putting them all in a single notebook, on a single page, but that was too hard to navigate. I prefer the feeling of *separate notes*, not just a big long page of "work journal". Putting them into different sections based on project didn't work too well either. It felt scattered - If I just wanted to pull up all the notes I wrote last friday (to remind myself what I was working on so that I could get back to it on Monday morning, for instance), there wasn't a quick and easy way to do that. The notes might be in all different places, if I was working on multiple projects at once.

 

In EN? Just pull up my Work notebook and sort by Date Created, and scroll through. Or do a search on date range first, THEN scroll. Done. Need notes on a particular project? Pull up a tag (I use tags for projects rather than notebooks, but a notebook would work as well).

 

This was just one example; the organization tripped me up in other ways as well. I just seem to work best with a big bucket to hold all the excess stuff in my head. 

 

I think ON has a lot of appeal and I'm sure it works great for some folks. It just didn't fit with my brain, at least not for my day-to-day work journaling needs.

 

As a side-note, as an experiment I AM using OneNote for one very specific purpose - meeting notes. I like the ability to easily shrink the window to fit next to other programs, so it is great for taking notes while watching a WebEx (I work from home, so I attend most meetings via webex). For meetings I lead, I don't worry about having ON up on my shared screen since there is zero personal information within it (I would worry about accidentally pulling up personal notes in EN in that case). And these types of notes fit great into the Notebook / Section  Page paradigm.

 

Obviously, people should use what works for them...but excess organizational structure isn't a positive of all of us. It is a big downside in my case.
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Just thought I'd toss in my two cents about EN / ON. 

 

Every time I read about OneNote's "superior" organizing ability, I find myself scratching my head. Maybe if I had started out using ON instead of EN, the hierarchy would work for me, but I guess EN has ruined me for that sort of thing :)  

 

I tried using ON a few years ago, and it just doesn't fit with how my mind works, apparently. I LIKE Evernote's big scrolling list of notes, appropriately portioned up into notebooks and stacks (with tags thrown in just in case). One of my primary uses is as a daily work journal - I jot notes down about what I'm working on constantly throughout the day. This is part of how I think...typing out my random thoughts about my work helps me actually do my work.

 

Doing those kinds of notes in ON just didn't scale well. I tried putting them all in a single notebook, on a single page, but that was too hard to navigate. I prefer the feeling of *separate notes*, not just a big long page of "work journal". Putting them into different sections based on project didn't work too well either. It felt scattered - If I just wanted to pull up all the notes I wrote last friday (to remind myself what I was working on so that I could get back to it on Monday morning, for instance), there wasn't a quick and easy way to do that. The notes might be in all different places, if I was working on multiple projects at once.

 

In EN? Just pull up my Work notebook and sort by Date Created, and scroll through. Or do a search on date range first, THEN scroll. Done. Need notes on a particular project? Pull up a tag (I use tags for projects rather than notebooks, but a notebook would work as well).

 

This was just one example; the organization tripped me up in other ways as well. I just seem to work best with a big bucket to hold all the excess stuff in my head. 

 

I think ON has a lot of appeal and I'm sure it works great for some folks. It just didn't fit with my brain, at least not for my day-to-day work journaling needs.

 

As a side-note, as an experiment I AM using OneNote for one very specific purpose - meeting notes. I like the ability to easily shrink the window to fit next to other programs, so it is great for taking notes while watching a WebEx (I work from home, so I attend most meetings via webex). For meetings I lead, I don't worry about having ON up on my shared screen since there is zero personal information within it (I would worry about accidentally pulling up personal notes in EN in that case). And these types of notes fit great into the Notebook / Section  Page paradigm.

 

Obviously, people should use what works for them...but excess organizational structure isn't a positive of all of us. It is a big downside in my case.

I agree.  I've posted many times on the board that I don't see EN & ON as competitors.  I use them both.  Sure, there is some overlap.  But ON is overkill for things that are ripe for Evernote.  I use Evernote pretty much every single hour of every single day.  ON, not so much.  But I do use it when brainstorming a project or when there are a lot of inputs on a project (many emails from many people, screen caps, etc.) 

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  • 4 weeks later...

OneNote is a tremendously powerful tool to organize bits and snippets of various types of information and link them back to Offce products (Outlook tasks, appointments, excel spreadsheets etc.)

 

The drawbacks are the file size, the way it forces you to use SkyDrive, and lack of native handwriting support on Android (the Android platform app is a bit limited). 

 

So if you don't need all of the bells and whistles, Evernote is simpler, easier to use and more truly cross-platform.

 

OneNote is much more powerful, it's just that all of that power is not needed by most users. It's more of a corporate tool. But one heck of a corporate tool.

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"OneNote is much more powerful" - if you're only concerned with Office products.  I think the general consensus here is "they're both good,  for different use cases."  I'll use whatever software gets the job done.

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I've been using them for different things as I'll explain at the end of this post. But I don't like to do that. One big advantage of either is the ability to search and find stuff. That works best if everything is in one application. If you have to remember what's in one and what's in ever (or god forbid) search twice it's more of a pain.

 

What I like best about Evernote is the vastly superior ability to clip from the web - at least when using a Windows desktop. This is great when using the web clipper for Chrome and pretty good when using it for Firefox. It's not so good when trying to clip from my android phone. OneNote clipping is abismal. the best it can do it copy web pages and pretty images. 

 

Tagging is also better in Evernote. Tagging in OneNote is a way to add symbols and icons rather than keywords that can serve as an ad hoc organizational structure.

 

Evernote is vastly inferior when it comes to formatting and layout within a note. They have no way to easily copy styles or formatting. The way they implement tables is nothing short of awful. OneNote is as good as WORD for this stuff.

 

OneNote also has more levels of hierarchical organization. Note Books, Sections, Section Groups, Pages, sub-pages. WOW! Some people don't care. Evernote's notes, stacks (one level only) and tags are fine. Whatever.

 

I use OneNote for projects where I need a lot of organizational structure and formatting. I tend to use Evernote for everything else.  As I said I don't like doing that. If Evernote would add styles and better table formatting I'd probably use it for everything. Or if OneNote would add the way to clip web pages like Ever then I'd be solidly in that camp. 

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I use both.

When I'm at work, sitting at my desktop (laptop) I use OneNote because I love the way it works with Notes, like a journal and the freeform text placement with bullets, etc.

 

When I'm using my tablet or phone, I use evernote. For me, evernote is just a lot easier to take notes across platforms. That might change when I get onboard with Office 365.

 

So to recap:

Planning, journaling, work stuff = OneNote

Clipping, scanning, instant note taking = Evernote

 

-Gawain

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  • 3 weeks later...
I've been a user of Evernote Premium for about a year now and I've found it very useful. Before signing up I checked out OneNote and was not really impressed especially when the cost was factored in. When I learned that OneNote 2013 is available at no cost (for personal use) I decided to check it out again. Here's what struck me most about OneNote today:
 
PROS
  • Can sort a notebook and notes however you choose independently of others.
  • Collaboration is real-time with good auditing tools.
  • Formatting is much stronger than EN.
  • Performance is solid.
CONS
  • It is not possible to email a note directly to ON (IFTTT helps but does not handle all needs).
  • OCR of photos is not automatic (you must manually right-click the photo in ON and tell it to "make searchable").
  • A ON account is limited to the amount of space available in the user's OneDrive account (it is not possible to offload data locally except for Quick Notes).
  • Though ON's tags are attractive, they are cumbersome to assign and it is not possible to query multiple tags at the same time or create saved/smart searches.
  • Clipping web media is much less intuitive and lacks many of the features in EN. You will need to amend or clean up nearly every note you create this way.
  • The user communities for ON fall far short of EN's own forum.
  • It is not possible to set reminders unless you also use Outlook.
  • "Date created", "date updated", "locations", "last edited by", etc. are, in my opinion, much more apparent and automatic in EN.
I'm tech savvy but would certainly not claim to be an expert of this kind of software so please correct me if I've misrepresented anything.

 

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I also like the Windows +S screen capture in OneNote Clipper. I don't have to open up another application to capture and markup screenshots.

 

OneNote doesn't copy the URL of the page that you clip from as far as I can tell.  Important to me.

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I've been a user of Evernote Premium for about a year now and I've found it very useful. Before signing up I checked out OneNote and was not really impressed especially when the cost was factored in. When I learned that OneNote 2013 is available at no cost (for personal use) I decided to check it out again. Here's what struck me most about OneNote today:
 
PROS

  • Can sort a notebook and notes however you choose independently of others.
  • Collaboration is real-time with good auditing tools.
  • Formatting is much stronger than EN.
  • Performance is solid.
CONS
  • It is not possible to email a note directly to ON (IFTTT helps but does not handle all needs).
  • OCR of photos is not automatic (you must manually right-click the photo in ON and tell it to "make searchable").
  • A ON account is limited to the amount of space available in the user's OneDrive account (it is not possible to offload data locally except for Quick Notes).
  • Though ON's tags are attractive, they are cumbersome to assign and it is not possible to query multiple tags at the same time or create saved/smart searches.
  • Clipping web media is much less intuitive and lacks many of the features in EN. You will need to amend or clean up nearly every note you create this way.
  • The user communities for ON fall far short of EN's own forum.
  • It is not possible to set reminders unless you also use Outlook.
  • "Date created", "date updated", "locations", "last edited by", etc. are, in my opinion, much more apparent and automatic in EN.
I'm tech savvy but would certainly not claim to be an expert of this kind of software so please correct me if I've misrepresented anything.

 

 

I will add some points:

 

PRO:

  • Offline notebook on mobile for free users. 

CONS

  • It is not possible to insert attachment like PDF file into note. A big let-down.
  • Audio note is for premium subscriber only.
  • iOS app is simply awkward

The editing of ON is certainly stronger. Many people prefer ON just for this reason. Let's hope EN will respond to the competition and improve editing.

 

They can be complementary as well. Evernote is like a library while ON serves as a quick note taking tool on the go. 

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Well, I've learned over the last 10 days that as great as Evernote is, if you need helpful tech support, you're done.  I've had to go through 4200 notes to find what wasn't syncing.  Every time I responded that i had tried something and it didn't work, I had to contact support the next day in order to get a reply.  That's for a premium user.  No more.  Going back to One Note and discontinuing my premium account when it expires.  

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Well, I've learned over the last 10 days that as great as Evernote is, if you need helpful tech support, you're done.  I've had to go through 4200 notes to find what wasn't syncing.  Every time I responded that i had tried something and it didn't work, I had to contact support the next day in order to get a reply.  That's for a premium user.  No more.  Going back to One Note and discontinuing my premium account when it expires.  

 

Sorry to hear about your difficult experience. In the future, I'd recommend using the chat option (see the link to Support in my signature -- you should have a link on that page for chat). This will get you in touch with a service representative immediately.

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  • Level 5*

Here is one similarity between the OneNote and Evernote service: "How long will the apps stay free? Microsoft had a simple answer: “Forever!”"

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/19/onenotes-transition-to-being-free-was-a-year-in-the-making/

 

Check back in ten years and see if they have kept their word. I hope they do. I've spent hundreds over the years on OneNote, so I am surprised they are giving up the cash, but I am guessing they are planning to make it back with premium upgrades and OneNote storage fees. 

 

It's worth noting that Evernote and OneNote come across looking quite similar in comparisons on tech blogs, but there is a big difference between paying more and more over time for storage in a cloud locker like Dropbox and Microsoft and the Evernote model that stores whatever you put into the service forever, regardless of whether you go free in the future or not. For example, you could throw 40 GB of stuff into Evernote this year, switch to free, and have access to it all ten years from now. You can't do this with the other services. This is something to think about.

 

It's great that they are both free for the basic services (otherwise, I'd hesitate to use them at all), but "free" in this case means different things.

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One of the strength of OneNote is Outlook integration - you can create Outlook tasks from OneNote items with a single click, you can link meeting notes to Calendar events (again, with a single click), etc.

 

Also, it's available offline for free on every device (this could also be a problem if your notes are huge).

 

One Note tags are imho better than Evernote tags, once you get the hang of them.

 

It also has the killer feature of automatic OCR on PDFs, like Evernote.

 

The inability to send a note to others from the program kills it for me. I use EN for meetings sometimes and like being able to send the note in email. Onedrive is blocked at many companies and so is EN, but at least EN lets you send the notes directly from the mobile.

I do keep it in the back of my mind... it's got best formatting features, great organizing features, offline mode on the mobile, and is free... plus it's greatly integrated on the desktop.

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One Note tags are imho better than Evernote tags, once you get the hang of them.

 

It also has the killer feature of automatic OCR on PDFs, like Evernote.

 

I've found some PDFs that Evernote's OCR works with but OneNote's doesn't

 

Also I'm curious about your comment about One Note tags - they don't seem to be words to search or filter by but rather icons you add into documents. What am I missing?

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Also I'm curious about your comment about One Note tags - they don't seem to be words to search or filter by but rather icons you add into documents. What am I missing?

I'm also trying to figure out tags in OneNote. I can't figure out how to add my own. They seem to be a very different animal than tags in Evernote.

And the "clipper" is just a bookmarklet?

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Here's a really good "first impressions" about OneNote and how it differs from Evernote:

 

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/first-impressions-onenote-stack-evernote/

Excellent review. The author has a similar view to mine. If you need to do lots of text based note taking with (what I consider fancy)formatting, OneNote is probably the way to go. For my needs, it's feature set is weak.

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Here's a really good "first impressions" about OneNote and how it differs from Evernote:

 

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/first-impressions-onenote-stack-evernote/

 

Thanks for the link.

I did not realize there was a free OneNote Windows version.

 

I downloaded it yesterday and have found several neat features.

A lot of new improvements since I last looked at it a couple years ago, especially with the connection to OneDrive

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  • 6 months later...

I know this is an older thread but I dealt with OneNote during the last days because in my company it is the only way to stay organized. Cloud solutions aren't allowed. Considering a lot of aspects that I need for my life, both personal and in my job I came to the conclusion that at least for my personal need Evernote is far superior to OneOne. Here is why:

 

- The web client not only looks completely different than the windows client but lacks fundamental features. For example you can't insert a PDF file with it. Same things with the android client as well :-(

- The OneNote clipper is miles behind the Evernote clipper - it just clips websites as a bitmap. Links getting lost, formatting can't be changed, ads and banners are still there. Meh...

- Notifications just with Outlook - huh? I mean, who uses Outlook nowadays (in private life)? So no notifications for me, a huge falldown.

- The document mode for the smartphone camera (as known from Evernote as well) called "Office lense" is only available on Windows phones.

- Searching in pictures is not comparable with Evernote who definitely finds a lot more.

 

ON has it advantages (Office integration of course, inline rendering PDF through a "printout", more flexible editing of notes) but for me EN is far superior...

These are just my 2 cent of course :-)

 

Cheers from germany,

Matze

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  • 1 month later...

Evernote is a scrapbooking/clipping service.

 

OneNote is a true note taking app.

 

I don't consider Evernote a note taking app.  It isn't capable enough, and the bandwidth limitations (both the 60MB free - which is laughable - and the 1GB paid tier for not much less than a full Office Personal subscription) are a slap in the face.

 

Microsoft has literally lowered the value of a service like this to $0.  They need a more polished product with more capabilities for actual note taking (and not just clipping or scrap booking, or saving lists/tasks - all of which OneNote does flawlessly) to make it worth the or consideration.

 

Most people who ask me about a service like this, I get them OneNote because it can do virtually everything that Evernote does with a lot more growth room for more advanced uses before someone has to start looking to 3rd party apps that use the service as a storage container (like the Galaxy Note users using Evernote, but only to store their S Notes because the S Note app is superior to the Evernote app).

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I used to use OneOnote and I swapped to Evernote. I swapped mainly for the following reasons:

 

1. Notes cannot be sorted in OneNote. Evernote has several sorting options, eg alphabetical, date modified etc. 

 

2. OneNote hogs loads of space on my phone, Evernote does not. OneNote can occupy hundreds of MB, and my phone is only 2GB total, half of which is Android itself, and apps. This is because OneNote seems to download everything, whereas Evernote only downloads tiny bits of metadata. 

 

Both of the above are major and are dealbreakers. 

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Evernote is a scrapbooking/clipping service.

 

OneNote is a true note taking app.

 

I don't consider Evernote a note taking app.  It isn't capable enough, and the bandwidth limitations (both the 60MB free - which is laughable - and the 1GB paid tier for not much less than a full Office Personal subscription) are a slap in the face.

 

Microsoft has literally lowered the value of a service like this to $0.  They need a more polished product with more capabilities for actual note taking (and not just clipping or scrap booking, or saving lists/tasks - all of which OneNote does flawlessly) to make it worth the or consideration.

 

Most people who ask me about a service like this, I get them OneNote because it can do virtually everything that Evernote does with a lot more growth room for more advanced uses before someone has to start looking to 3rd party apps that use the service as a storage container (like the Galaxy Note users using Evernote, but only to store their S Notes because the S Note app is superior to the Evernote app).

Although I am migrating from Evernote to Onenote (my reasons are posted on the board already), it's clear you have no idea how powerful Evernote used to be and could be, if the Evernote devs focused on things like scalability & quality assurance.

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I used to use OneOnote and I swapped to Evernote. I swapped mainly for the following reasons:

1. Notes cannot be sorted in OneNote. Evernote has several sorting options, eg alphabetical, date modified etc.

2. OneNote hogs loads of space on my phone, Evernote does not. OneNote can occupy hundreds of MB, and my phone is only 2GB total, half of which is Android itself, and apps. This is because OneNote seems to download everything, whereas Evernote only downloads tiny bits of metadata.

Both of the above are major and are dealbreakers.

FYI, I have been a big proponent of Evernote for many years. I have a very large Evernote database that has caused Evernote (Windows desktop & iOS) to become unusable on my PC, iPhone and iPad. I suspect it's because Evernote keeps everything in a single database where Onenote allows you to segregate notes into an endless number of notebooks that can be opened or closed. Of course, Onenote only searches open notebooks, so one really needs to know what notebook your note resides in. IMO, this is one of the reasons why Evernote is superior...as long you don't have tens of thousands of notes...

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  • Level 5*

I don't consider Evernote a note taking app.  It isn't capable enough, and the bandwidth limitations (both the 60MB free - which is laughable - and the 1GB paid tier for not much less than a full Office Personal subscription) are a slap in the face.

 

So how much note taking does 60MB support anyway?  Well, if I am in pure note taking mode, assuming a character equals a byte, a typing speed of 60 WPM (300 BPM), and my calculations are accurate, that would be about 138.89 days of constant typing.  That's more than a month, so one would be safe.  Gattaca anyone?

 

So you probably need to be doing something more than just note taking to consume either the free or premium upload limits.  So maybe one might want to compare the actual functionality and, is so well put above, reliability to make one's decision.  Just saying....

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I used to use OneOnote and I swapped to Evernote. I swapped mainly for the following reasons:

 

1. Notes cannot be sorted in OneNote. Evernote has several sorting options, eg alphabetical, date modified etc. 

 

2. OneNote hogs loads of space on my phone, Evernote does not. OneNote can occupy hundreds of MB, and my phone is only 2GB total, half of which is Android itself, and apps. This is because OneNote seems to download everything, whereas Evernote only downloads tiny bits of metadata. 

 

Both of the above are major and are dealbreakers. 

 

These are reasons that keep Evernote my primary notes app and the way Evernote tags items.

 

I'm an IT director and use both these platforms. I don't pretend to be an expert knowing both well but I'm a pretty strong IT user via my work. For me Evernote is far more of a remember everything and find it later machine, and it's fast. OneNote is more of a make and organize stuff cute machine with lots of formatting options.

 

Evernote's way of tagging makes it better for my keeping a lot of notes and often having same text in different notes that are not related. Put another way, Evernote tags and searching works better for me when there are hundreds of notes.

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I used to use OneOnote and I swapped to Evernote. I swapped mainly for the following reasons:

 

1. Notes cannot be sorted in OneNote. Evernote has several sorting options, eg alphabetical, date modified etc. 

 

2. OneNote hogs loads of space on my phone, Evernote does not. OneNote can occupy hundreds of MB, and my phone is only 2GB total, half of which is Android itself, and apps. This is because OneNote seems to download everything, whereas Evernote only downloads tiny bits of metadata. 

 

Both of the above are major and are dealbreakers.

 

These are reasons that keep Evernote my primary notes app and the way Evernote tags items.

 

I'm an IT director and use both these platforms. I don't pretend to be an expert knowing both well but I'm a pretty strong IT user via my work. For me Evernote is far more of a remember everything and fine it later machine, and it's fast. OneNote is more of a make and organize stuff cute machine with lots of formatting options.

 

Evernote's way of tagging makes it better for my keeping a lot of notes and often having same text in different notes that are not related. Put another way, Evernote tags and searching works better for me when there are hundreds of notes.

Tagging! I knew I'd. left something out!

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I used to use OneOnote and I swapped to Evernote. I swapped mainly for the following reasons:

 

1. Notes cannot be sorted in OneNote. Evernote has several sorting options, eg alphabetical, date modified etc. 

 

2. OneNote hogs loads of space on my phone, Evernote does not. OneNote can occupy hundreds of MB, and my phone is only 2GB total, half of which is Android itself, and apps. This is because OneNote seems to download everything, whereas Evernote only downloads tiny bits of metadata. 

 

Both of the above are major and are dealbreakers.

 

These are reasons that keep Evernote my primary notes app and the way Evernote tags items.

 

I'm an IT director and use both these platforms. I don't pretend to be an expert knowing both well but I'm a pretty strong IT user via my work. For me Evernote is far more of a remember everything and fine it later machine, and it's fast. OneNote is more of a make and organize stuff cute machine with lots of formatting options.

 

Evernote's way of tagging makes it better for my keeping a lot of notes and often having same text in different notes that are not related. Put another way, Evernote tags and searching works better for me when there are hundreds of notes.

Tagging! I knew I'd. left something out!

 

I realize people use these products differently, but the Evernote style of tagging and search gets me to bits of information I need fast and easy. I have nothing against OneNote, like the way it looks and the way a book can be but it's a different animal in this tag and search aspect.

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Although I am migrating from Evernote to Onenote (my reasons are posted on the board already), it's clear you have no idea how powerful Evernote used to be and could be, if the Evernote devs focused on things like scalability & quality assurance.

 

BurgersNFries, Do you have any thoughts that you can share on how you are migrating to OneNote?  I'm reading what you said about can't search across the various notebooks, so  have you rethought your "Tagged system" as to the best NoteBook stacks? What sort of problems are you having migrating out?

 

As an aside -- I have intense respect for you and gazumped (and a few others)  I have learned so much from you guys. I can not thank you enough for the endless hours you have spent trying to help people

 

I have simply not been able to get the amazing Evernote tagged system converted to a Onenote way of thinking. But...at least I can get Onenote to work instead of hanging up my computer & having to stop the application in task manager.  So although (IMO) the Evernote tag system is superior, it's not helpful if the app won't work with my (large) database.  And that doesn't appear to be anything Evernote is working on, even though they have claimed to want to be a 100 year company.

I have discussed the quirks & tips & tricks on this message board:

http://en2one.proboards.com/

Thank you for the kind words, too.

 

I realize people use these products differently, but the Evernote style of tagging and search gets me to bits of information I need fast and easy. I have nothing against OneNote, like the way it looks and the way a book can be but it's a different animal in this tag and search aspect.

Absolutely agree! The very tagging system that so many new to Evernote eschew, is where (IMO) Onenote fails miserably.

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I don't consider Evernote a note taking app.  It isn't capable enough, and the bandwidth limitations (both the 60MB free - which is laughable - and the 1GB paid tier for not much less than a full Office Personal subscription) are a slap in the face.

 

So how much note taking does 60MB support anyway?  Well, if I am in pure note taking mode, assuming a character equals a byte, a typing speed of 60 WPM (300 BPM), and my calculations are accurate, that would be about 138.89 days of constant typing.  That's more than a month, so one would be safe.  Gattaca anyone?

 

So you probably need to be doing something more than just note taking to consume either the free or premium upload limits.  So maybe one might want to compare the actual functionality and, is so well put above, reliability to make one's decision.  Just saying....

 

 

 

Additionally, there are many premium users who make a lot of notes and yet NEVER exceeded the (then) monthly upload limit of one gig.  It's clear GalaxyNoter not only doesn't realize it's not a "bandwidth" limitation and it's also clear he/she never really used Evernote, either. 

 

Personally, I had to laugh out loud (really) when I saw EN recently increased their premium upload limit from 1 gig to 4.  They have taken away several things that were really useful (or not fixed core functionality) and yet give premium users three more gigs of upload that most will never even use.  A bit of a "let them eat cake" attitude, IMO. 

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  • 2 months later...

I recently made the switch from Evernote to OneNote as my primary note taking and collaboration utility. I've been battling this for months as I've tried to use Evernote to collaborate with my co-workers who found Evernote to be rather clumsy for reviewing the work I was trying to share.

 

Evernote's clipping facilities are unmatched. However, don't laugh (actually - go ahead and laugh), I recently discovered Pinterest and find it much more fun to use for "clipping".

 

Evernote is drop-dead simple and there's a place for that. I'm glad I found it and mastered it as it made me understand the superiority of OneNote for my needs.

 

On another note, I found that some of the posts detailing shortfalls of Evernote or OneNote are simply untrue. Posters should really investigate whether or not a product can do something or seek confirmation as they are not doing the reader any favors when they misrepresent a product.

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It is not uncommen for people to express their "opinion" when all they are doing is claiming air time & attracting attention by trying to be interesting.

At the end of the day, I think it is fair to say that both Evernote & OneNote have their strong & weak points, and that one's choice depends on one's use case & what one feels comfortable with. In fact, they could very well be used in a complementary way, as I discovered.

 

I recently made the switch from Evernote to OneNote as my primary note taking and collaboration utility. I've been battling this for months as I've tried to use Evernote to collaborate with my co-workers who found Evernote to be rather clumsy for reviewing the work I was trying to share.

 

Evernote's clipping facilities are unmatched. However, don't laugh (actually - go ahead and laugh), I recently discovered Pinterest and find it much more fun to use for "clipping".

 

Evernote is drop-dead simple and there's a place for that. I'm glad I found it and mastered it as it made me understand the superiority of OneNote for my needs.

 

On another note, I found that some of the posts detailing shortfalls of Evernote or OneNote are simply untrue. Posters should really investigate whether or not a product can do something or seek confirmation as they are not doing the reader any favors when they misrepresent a product.

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  • Level 5*

In fact, they could very well be used in a complementary way, as I discovered.

Could you please elaborate? I haven't used ON, but am interested given the areas where EN falls short. It just seems at first glance (again, no firsthand experience) that it would be more efficient to go whole hog with one platform or the other rather than try to store some notes in each.
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I use EN as my digital filing cabinet because, most, if not all, other uses I am not happy with as it does not do them well. Filling that cabinet can be done in the various good ways EN offers, like forwarding an email for filing, web clipping, drag & drop files, etc. However, formatting is pretty poor, as are tables, whilst hierarchical organisation is rudimentary & clunky. For those things, and some other ones, I use 1N.

I consciously did away with elaborate notebook/stack organisation in EN & am comfortable with that because EN's search capabilities are 2nd to none. However, there are situations where I do want hierarchical organisation, in which case I use 1N.

I use tables quite a lot & don't like what EN offers. Same for formatting.

Some of the things I do in 1N I import into EN afterwards because it concerns a document or record that needs to be filed.

I am happy to use both systems in parallel; in fact I even use a 3rd one for a specific purpose, but that's another story.

If someone would put a gun against my head & tell me to choose between 1N & EN, I would choose the latter. But I am not expecting to encounter that kind of "offer I can't refuse".

At the end of the day, it's horses for courses.

 

Could you please elaborate? I haven't used ON, but am interested given the areas where EN falls short. It just seems at first glance (again, no firsthand experience) that it would be more efficient to go whole hog with one platform or the other rather than try to store some notes in each.

 

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  • Level 5*

Some of the things I do in 1N I import into EN afterwards because it concerns a document or record that needs to be filed.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you only need to search EN because most, if not all, the content is there, though you may need to go to ON to see it in its best form.
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As a Mac user, I feel evernote is best for me and I don't feel like there is much competition out there in the Mac Perspective. OneNote is 2nd to Evernote for my needs. I wanted to like OneNote so bad but the Mac features compared to Windows is so limited. 

 

Like many have said already in this forum, OneNote is deep in terms of editing tools where as Evernote, its nice to have a digital file cabinet and Web Clipping but I can't use multiple colors of highlighting for study purposes and stacks are one level deeps. 

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As a Mac user, I feel evernote is best for me and I don't feel like there is much competition out there in the Mac Perspective. OneNote is 2nd to Evernote for my needs. I wanted to like OneNote so bad but the Mac features compared to Windows is so limited. 

 

As a windows user I feel the opposite. Evernote for Mac seems to get updates faster and have more features than Windows. The thing that ultimately sent me to OneNote was Evernote's anemic ability to edit tables - which I understand was upgraded in the Mac version but not the Windows. 

 

Evernote is better on mobile, and better at clipping but for the way I work the tables were more important. Now I'm so used to OneNote's search and hierarchy that I don't know if I'll ever come back. The other thing I like better about Ever is the way the tags work. Evernote tags the whole note (so that sort of makes up for the inability to have a hierarchy) where OneNote tags a line of text. 

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I am fairly new to Evernote and am considering to get a yearly subscription to the service. Does anyone know where to find historical updates to Evernote since the beginning of Evernote? I would like to see how often they make large changes to the program. It just seems to be simple things like multiple color highlighters has been a request for years and has not been implemented. I want to know what this company's goals are for 2015 but couldn't find any information.  

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  • Level 5*

I am fairly new to Evernote and am considering to get a yearly subscription to the service. Does anyone know where to find historical updates to Evernote since the beginning of Evernote? I would like to see how often they make large changes to the program. It just seems to be simple things like multiple color highlighters has been a request for years and has not been implemented. I want to know what this company's goals are for 2015 but couldn't find any information.  

 

A Google search on "Evernote version history" turned up this: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/desktop/notes/evernote_for_windows.cfm#all_versions, for the Windows version. There's also this, which goes back a bit further.

 

They generally do not give out future plans with any specificity, but they are currently heading in a business-y direction, in their own inimitable way. You can check out the Evernote Blog which might give some general clues, or look for articles on Phil Libin, the CEO.

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I don't think there is anywhere central, a couple of people used to keep release note summary threads on here but haven't done so for quite some time.

 

Evernote don't often discuss their roadmap and seem to develop what they believe will be useful rather than necessarily what people think will be simple.

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  • Level 5*

One potential drawback to OneNote for some users is that the free version does not permit local notebooks (or whatever the ON equivalent of EN's local notebooks is called), so all your data is in the 'cloud', with all the security issues associated with online data storage.

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As a Mac user, I feel evernote is best for me and I don't feel like there is much competition out there in the Mac Perspective. OneNote is 2nd to Evernote for my needs. I wanted to like OneNote so bad but the Mac features compared to Windows is so limited. 

 

As a windows user I feel the opposite. Evernote for Mac seems to get updates faster and have more features than Windows. The thing that ultimately sent me to OneNote was Evernote's anemic ability to edit tables - which I understand was upgraded in the Mac version but not the Windows. 

 

Evernote is better on mobile, and better at clipping but for the way I work the tables were more important. Now I'm so used to OneNote's search and hierarchy that I don't know if I'll ever come back. The other thing I like better about Ever is the way the tags work. Evernote tags the whole note (so that sort of makes up for the inability to have a hierarchy) where OneNote tags a line of text. 

 

 

I use both, and m IT director seat has me using mobile versions too. We have 750+ employees and with a group that size I must say a big sorry if we've missed where or how the Mac client is lacking in a sigficant way.

 

I cannot get passionate or fan boy on this topic as many do. We recently had a team analyze pros and cons for popular collaboration tools. All the main players have great products.

 

My using Evernote most is because of the tag style and speed. I see our corporate controller doesn't find those as important and tends toward OneNote because of the text formatting features he likes.

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I think Preston Gralla summed it up quite nicely ... "If you're primarily looking for a tool that lets you easily capture, organize and find content from the Web, you'll clearly want Evernote, because its tools for doing that are exemplary. If you instead want to create notes from scratch and have them in well-organized notebooks, clearly OneNote is the way to go." 

 

If you want "pretty" notebooks laid out like a Word doc, then check out OneNote, If information access is important, then Evernote is the premier tool.

 

Also... If interactivity with the developer community is something you value, it's been my experience that Evernote's feature development and support are unmatched by anything Microsoft. 

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I've found OneNote to be superior at information access, organizing, and collaboration while Evernote is, for my uses, superior at capturing web content. I think we could all agree that they truly are different products as neither contains all the capabilities of the other. So, instead of proselytizing, perhaps we could all share what we know to be the differences between the products and how each is used to meet our own needs.

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Hey Jefito, thanks for the tip about after.com!

I am fairly new to Evernote and am considering to get a yearly subscription to the service. Does anyone know where to find historical updates to Evernote since the beginning of Evernote? I would like to see how often they make large changes to the program. It just seems to be simple things like multiple color highlighters has been a request for years and has not been implemented. I want to know what this company's goals are for 2015 but couldn't find any information.

A Google search on "Evernote version history" turned up this: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/desktop/notes/evernote_for_windows.cfm#all_versions, for the Windows version. There's also this, which goes back a bit further.

They generally do not give out future plans with any specificity, but they are currently heading in a business-y direction, in their own inimitable way. You can check out the Evernote Blog which might give some general clues, or look for articles on Phil Libin, the CEO.

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  • 1 month later...

After years of using Evernote, I threw in the towel and went to OneNote.

They are very different tools doing essentially the same thing.

My reasons, in no particular order:

- Evernote is a huge box with info somewhere inside, in a huge pile. To find that info, I had to remember that it was even there. Also, I had to make sure every new record was tagged. That tagging, on the fly, took just too much time.

Onenote is a set of neatly organized notebooks. All new records by default go into the default "quick notes" section, and I can later move them around when I have time and inclination. I can see the not yet organized records as I open the notebook. I can also see the entire structure of my records, without having to actually read them.

- I primarily use iPad for working with my data. Onenote for iPad used to suck but it's been aggressively developed and is now full of features. With latest update, I can draw or write on pictures, I can place text and files anywhere in the note, I can finally export the entire page as a PDF file.

Evernote is a bit harder to annotate, and does not have a similar full set of features to take notes in.

- With Onenote, I can AES encrypt any section of any notebook right from my iPad (it has to be unlocked before it can be searched). With Evernote free, I had to encrypt every document individually before uploading it. If I understand it correctly, Premium version encrypts the whole database.

- Onenote for PC is one amazing application (I have a full version, $10 through my employer). Easily the best app MS ever came up with. Unfortunately some of the better functionality such as searchable tags or collapsible outline structure did not yet make it to iOS.

In years of using Onenote alongside Evernote (I always kept my ongoing projects in it, since the structured outline form is perfect for this) I've never had any issues with losing data. I have a strong suspicion that some of the records I put in Evernote are no longer there, but I am not 100% sure that I did have them.

Evernote has it's own strong points:

- Ability to specify what data is cached locally. The fact that MS feels it must cache the entire file on your device is a serious drawback for mobile phone users on a data plan. I go around this by breaking my data into manageable sized notebooks and pre-syncing them at home on wifi, this way if I ever need to update something while on mobile network I only have to sync a chunk of my data.

- A better web client. I think MS Onenote web client is clunky and slow, at least from my work.

- I did not have much luck emailing records to Onenote.

- iOS client does not allow creating Reminders or setting up alarms.

In the end, though, it was the organizational structure of Onenote and the features in it's iOS and desktop apps that made me make a switch.

AFAIK, Onenote for iOS developers are working on Dropbox sync, which should be a good feature for some.

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I posted this in a different thread, but I've been trying ON for a while now since we got it at work.

 

For my personal use I still prefer EN, but ON has some great features.

 

I love the draw options in the Windows, Android and iOS versions - you can knock up quick diagrams as well as freehand drawing anywhere on the page. It's not Visio, but for a quick and dirty diagram it's useful. The ability to draw anywhere is great, and beats the Skitch based annotation of images in my opinion. Sadly the one client that lacks it is the Mac one, which is what I use at home.

 

Unfortunately the downsides outweigh the ups for me. The webclipping is too basic, EN is much more flexible in that regard.

 

The killer is poor sync. I deleted a notebook in ON on the web, and rather than have it disappear from my phone I just got sync errors as it tried to sync the now non-existant notebook. I actually had to enter my credentials again and then select another notebook just to get it syncing.

 

So far EN has the edge for me because it just works. The sync is order of magnitudes faster and is more reliable, which is critical for me as I'm often switching between devices.

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  • 1 month later...

Unfortunately my experience has been the opposite: ON just works while EN often doesn't. I believe my needs are fairly undemanding: I want a digital notebook or filing cabinet that can handle a large amount of (mostly) plain text notes, that is clearly laid out, easily searchable, multi platform and syncs fast and reliably between these platforms and collaborates well with other apps. UI niggles aside, when EN works it is pretty much exactly what I want but there are ongoing issues. Capturing and syncing text between devices can create weird formatting issues, URL links in notes are randomly converted to plain text and my most used action - search by tag - causes EN to crash on iOS (yes, I tried uninstall / reinstall etc but no joy). ON has a lot of shortcomings for my use case - no custom tags on Mac / iOS and the web clipper only captures static images - but there are workarounds and formatting and sync have been rock solid so far. Having migrated from EN to plain TXT notes and back again, I'm wary of migrating yet again but I'm seriously considering moving to ON. Shame.

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  • Level 5*

Thank you very much Grumpy :) I already have my notes organised alphabetically by title / key word, but with 1000+ notes I found searching by tag the most convenient option.

Hi. I see :)

Here is another possibility: intratextual tags.

http://zettelkasten.de/posts/intratextual-tags/

I used to do this in Evernote via random numbers: "Random Character Strings: Tag and notebook aficionadoes might scoff at me, but I use random character strings to clump notes together. All I do is paste a code into the bottom of related notes. If I come across the note later and want to see the related ones, I copy the code, put it into the search box, and it will filter the results to show me just those notes with the code. No need to come up with a tag name, tag hierarchies, etc. if you have consistent naming in the titles and random character strings to associate notes with one another."

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=275

There's nothing wrong with using Evernote's tags, but having redundancy insulates you better from the nasty effects of hiccups that, unfortunately, do happen.

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Thank you so much for your help :)

 

I actually put hard coded tags into my notes when I migrated from EN to nvALT (basically keywords with a "z" added at the beginning so they could be filtered easily) but I removed them when I moved back to EN. Should have known better :P

 

I think what I'll do is stick with EN and hope that either I find out what's causing the problem or that a future update will remedy it. In the meantime I'll build up ON as Plan B. With 1000+ notes that'll take a while anyway.

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At work I'm restricted to using the web interface, and there I've found a case where ON beats EN.

 

I wanted to stick a screenshot in a note. With ON I could simply copy and paste the image. That doesn't work with EN - I'd have to upload it (Skitch integration isn't an option - I'm restricted in what I install on the PC). The copy and paste option also works with Google Docs - and the Google Keep/Docs combination is another option in place of a dedicated note app.

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