With so much content saying that OneNote is better than Evernote, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. In many areas, Evernote still beats OneNote. The question is whether the benefits of Evernote are enough to convince you to stay. For me, they were.
9,452.
That's how many notes I've saved to my Evernote account. Over the past six years, I have collected notes covering almost every area of life. Highlights of articles I've read, to-do lists, Instagram photos, guitar tabs, ideas, and an amazing array of references I've collected along the way.
And just last year, I tried Microsoft OneNote for the first time. An amazing app, any way you look at it. It's tempting to be able to organize notes as you would naturally in a ring binder. What about the features that let me drag and drop items into my notes so they actually look like a physical notebook? Now that was impressive.
After a while, I tried to integrate with OneNote, and the newness of the app had me writing all kinds of odes. I explained why OneNote is the best Evernote alternative. The best Evernote alternative is OneNote and it is free. The best Evernote alternative is OneNote and it is free. The market is full of note-taking apps that compete with Evernote. But there is only one serious alternative to Evernote. Let's explain why that's OneNote. Read More Did I even tell readers everything they needed to know before leaving Evernote for OneNote Migrating From Evernote to OneNote? All you need to know! Migrating from Evernote to OneNote? All you need to know! OneNote is one of the best alternatives to Evernote and it's free. We'll show you how OneNote is different and show you the tools to migrate seamlessly. Read more.
But my love affair with OneNote was short-lived. He was probably just mad that Evernote had raised their prices without really improving their service (although their free option is still notable). In the meantime, though, the web was abuzz with articles explaining why OneNote was so much better than Evernote.
Most of these articles, however, miss some important points that have seen several people (me included) tiptoe into Evernote with their tails between their legs.
After waiting over two hours for the importer tool to do its job, I stared at my screen in horror as I realized the task ahead of me.
OneNote did some weird things with my finicky tags, practically rendering them useless. After the import, it appears that OneNote converts the first tag in your notes to a section. I have no idea why this is happening, as tags are completely different than sections. You can imagine the organizational mess this can make.
In Evernote, I also had a lot of stacked notebooks. OneNote for Mac (which I'm using) can't deal with the simple task of stacking (be it notebooks or even notes). Instead, I am faced with a long list of unorganized notebooks (and notes). Windows users, you're in luck here. You have the feature available to create notebook. groups .
An option to keep parent notebooks as notebooks , and convert child notebooks to sections It would have been intuitive (also for Windows users), but that's not possible. To achieve this intuitive setup manually (turn some notebooks into sections) takes a lot of work.
Evernote's web clipper is truly the best in the business. With it you can save complete articles, simplified articles or selections of articles. You can take custom sized screenshots or simply save web pages as a bookmark.
Yes, OneNote's web clipper can pretty much do all of the above, but where Evernote's clipper stands out is its annotation features.
When you take a screenshot with the Evernote clipper, you can insert arrows, notes, pixelations, highlights, and more on the screenshot, before saving it to a notebook of your choice. This is not possible with OneNote.
Windows users, you've got it pretty good when it comes to OneNote. OneNote's range of smart features are 7 Little-Known OneNote Features You'll Love 7 Little-Known OneNote Features You'll Love OneNote is 100% free and packed with advanced features. Let's take a look at some of the ones you may have missed. If you're not already using OneNote, these may beat you to it. Read More But for Mac users (like me), there's too much to go.
There are other restrictions for Mac users. The Essential Guide to OneNote for Mac The Essential Guide to OneNote for Mac OneNote is a free, cross-platform note-taking app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Our short guide summarizes everything you need to know. Forget your hate for Microsoft and try OneNote with us today. Read More Mainly because there is absolutely no need for most of these limitations. Microsoft could at least offer a full-featured paid version for Mac users. Alas, they don't.
In Evernote, it's extremely easy to set reminders. These reminders alert you about a specific note, on the date you specify. As you can imagine, this can be quite useful.
For OneNote users who want to set a reminder, things are more complicated. You have to mark individual notes as tasks, which will then appear as tasks in Outlook. How to Use Outlook for Simple Tasks and Project Management How to Use Outlook for Simple Tasks and Project Management Outlook can function as a simple tool for managing projects and tasks. Here's how to set up Outlook Tasks to set reminders and due dates, assign to-dos, and track links. Read more . Tasks created in Outlook will also appear in OneNote. This is fine if you use Outlook. But if you don't, it's far from ideal.
Once again, even OneNote's frustrating reminder setting isn't available for Mac users.
I'm up for a roast for saying this, but OneNote is often too different for anyone heavily invested in Evernote.
Anyone making the switch to OneNote will need to be prepared to change their organizational set-up extensively. Yes, OneNote has a nicer interface than Evernote. And it is absolutely free. But unless you're prepared to meticulously edit the format and layout of each of your notes, OneNote's wide range of features seems like a burden. It's too much.
Note taking is often a simple act of collecting and sorting information so that it can be easily found in the future. For this, Evernote still seems like the best option.
And for Mac users, choosing Evernote seems like a no-brainer. The number of restrictions Mac users have when using OneNote is ridiculous. If you've used Evernote for a period of time, there are valuable features Maximize Evernote with 5 Powerful Features Maximize Evernote with 5 Powerful Features With over 100 million users, Evernote is arguably the web's favorite note-taking and saving tool. We're spotlighting 5 underappreciated Evernote features and detailing their value. Read More
The decision is ultimately yours. But for me, the mess OneNote made of my notes, its lightweight web clipper, and over-engineering of note-taking was enough to bring me back to Evernote.
What are your thoughts? If you've tried both Evernote and OneNote, which did you decide to stick with? And if not, what is the temptation to use?
