Microsoft OneNote
Comprehensive digital notebook offering organizers, shared notes, multi-device syncing, and optical character recognition, plus cloud-based data management for efficient information handling and accessibility.
Cost / License
- Freemium (Subscription)
- Proprietary
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Chrome OS
- Windows Phone
- iPad
- Apple Watch
- Android Wear
- Kindle Fire
Features
Integrations
- Calendar
IFTTT
OneLogin
Outlook
Features
- Handwritten Notes
- Web Clipper
- Visual Organization
- Hierarchical Structure
- Text formatting
- Insert images
- Works Offline
- Support for styluses
- Cloud Sync
- Unicode Math Support
- Sketching
- Knowledge Management
- Audio Recording
- Dark Mode
- File Sync
- Embedded media
- Notebook
- Pressure Sensitivity
- Real-time sync
- Team Collaboration
- Linking capability
- Unlimited Canvas Area
- Screenshot OCR
- Auto adjusting tables
- Folder Hierarchy
- LaTeX Math
- Multiple Account support
- Full-Text Search
- OCR
- Subtasks
- WYSIWYG Support
- PDF OCR
- Search by tags
- Freehand Writing
- Protected by Password
- Photo Import
- Dynamic typing
- Data export/import
- No dependencies
- Automatic Tagging
- Sections
- Legacy Firefox Addon
- Auto-saving
- Tabbed interface
- Hyperlinks
- Integrated Search
- Voice recognition
- Better formatting
- Handwriting recognition
Tags
- website-screenshot
- getting-things-done
- Microsoft Office
- text-recognition
Microsoft OneNote News & Activities
Recent News
- Maoholguin published news article about Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft launches new Premium plan with Office apps & Copilot Pro, plus updated app iconsMicrosoft is introducing a new $19.99-per-month plan called Microsoft 365 Premium, which combines t...
- Maoholguin published news article about Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft 365 apps feature updates to end for Windows 10 as upgrade to Windows 11 requiredMicrosoft will stop introducing new features to Microsoft 365 Copilot apps (formerly Microsoft 365 ...
- Maoholguin published news article about Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft to upgrade Meeting Details feature in OneNote for WindowsMicrosoft plans to enhance the Meeting Details feature in its Microsoft OneNote for Windows app for...
Recent activities
- pastel_p1xel_punK added AddedAsAlternative
elasticnote added Microsoft OneNote as alternative to Elasticnote
haidoit added Microsoft OneNote as alternative to Journal it!- adamcorso liked Microsoft OneNote
yousef-mohamad added Microsoft OneNote as alternative to myfreelancermate
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Xyvir added Microsoft OneNote as alternative to Lithic PKMS
jkanev added Microsoft OneNote as alternative to TreeTime
atsokolas added Microsoft OneNote as alternative to Note Taker
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What is Microsoft OneNote?
Microsoft OneNote, part of the 
Microsoft 365 Copilot, is a digital notebook application that gives people one place to gather notes and information. It also offers shared notebooks, syncing between multiple computers and devices via Windows Live online storage, and optical character recognition (OCR) for getting a text from pictures, business cards, etc.
An online version, 
OneNote Online, is also available as part of 
Office Online. Only the online version is free.
Microsoft OneNote information
Developed by
Microsoft Licensing
Proprietary and Freemium product.Pricing
Subscription ranging between $30 and $50 per month + free version with limited functionality.Rating
Average rating of 3.3Alternatives
137 alternatives listedNews
12 news article related to Microsoft OneNoteSupported Languages
- English
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- Catalan; Valencian
- Croatian
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- Danish
- Dutch
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
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AlternativeTo Categories
Office & Productivity, Photos & Graphics, Remote Work & Education, Audio & Music, Backup & SyncApple AppStore
- Updated
- 4.72 avg rating
Comments and Reviews
Doesn't matter if you use any of these which I also have extensively used for years / tested almost every workflow and extension you can think of related to onenote / its competitors:
OneNote has an evolved form of the native windows
Snipping Tool which is by far its best feature and the reason you should use onenote, even if you don't use it at all
Pressing WIN + S key to screenshot something natively in a windows PC is only achievable by onenote. I use it almost everyday. Nothing remotely comes close to its sheer simplicity and function
Pairs really well with other apps that I use like (which are my picks for best-in-class) as well
very handy for making crappy-but-effective UX doodles / diagrams so I can draft proposals in no time at all
[Edited by Kagerjay, July 07]
[Edited by Kagerjay, July 07]
[Edited by Kagerjay, July 07]
Sunset – better stop using it now!
Microsoft has announced that OneNote is no longer going to be part of Office 2019, so OneNote 2016 will be the last ever version. It's going to be supported until 2020, then it's over. One of many sources: RCP Mag
What Microsoft wants you to use instead is the UWP/Windows 10 version of the OneNote app. Of course, as everyone who has ever tried using it knows, that little app is barely a replacement for the powerful note-taking application that is/was OneNote. Like almost every UWP app, it's a glorified little phone toy that doesn't hold up to actual work requirements at all.
To understand that, you don't need to know anything beyond the fact that the OneNote app, the official successor of OneNote 2016, still doesn't, and probably never will, support offline notebooks. That's right, it's 100% cloud or go home. No more local backups, no more being in control of your own data, no more deciding yourself if, how, and where to store and sync your information. If you're okay with that, you might as well switch to using Facebook Notes.
R.I.P. Microsoft OneNote, 2003–2020. You were pretty decent.
Office OneNote is indeed a mile better. Usability is far ahead of UWP version - better ribbon, iconset, sections as tabs, colorized pages sidebar, better main color, offline notebooks. backups, export etc etc. UWP has quite depressive dark violet color. It's pretty sad. Instead of spending those years to improve Office OneNote, they are wasting it on reinventing the wheel doing it far worse than before. And OneNote does need improvements. At least format text as code with syntax highlight.
Update: Late in 2019, Microsoft seem to have changed their mind and started to update the desktop version of OneNote again.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/4/20947729/microsoft-onenote-2016-desktop-app-dark-mode-support-download
They're not explicitly admitting that they're changing course from what they announced in 2018, but it certainly is unexpected news considering that they were very clear about the future of OneNote being strictly in the cloud (I even remember an official Microsoft statement about the concern that this makes OneNote incompatible with the requirements of certain corporate environments, which pretty directly stated something like: "We understand, but tough luck.")
I'm not considering moving back just yet. Ill-considered quick-fire announcements like that have an effect, one of them being that people start looking for alternatives. I suspect I'm not the only one who has set up a new workflow for note-keeping in the meantime.
Thanks for the detals mate, I was having issues moving notes around. But seeing this thing now, it's concrete move for me and it felt great to have similar functionalities to Google Notes and Zoho Notes for whoever remembers those sweet antics of the past. Alas, this one takes the same route, quite unfortunate. I was bewildred how MS were able to actually come-up with something useful for once, and here we go it'll be gone, cause screw UX xD
Microsoft and Google never make lightweight apps.
Exporting the page is useless because it doesn't form most of the images. It's not possible to simply move an image-heavy page to another app's format. This inconvenience hasn't improved in over a decade.
I took it for granted that Online OneNote would allow me to export to the MHT extension, so I synced a few pages as an experiment. Funnily enough, Online OneNote doesn't have an export feature, which seems to be their intention to lock you into the OneNote experience.
I will never use OneNote again.
I am aware of other alternatives for note-taking, like the Open Source app Joplin. But there are limitations that hold me back. For example, with Joplin it is brilliant if you're happy with using Markdown, but OneNote gives me a canvas to work with and is cross-platform so I can use my stylus to take handwritten notes on the Galaxy Tab, then add more bits to the same notes from my desktop (e.g. screenshots).
Other apps, I have considered:
OneNote has grown a lot and it is pretty amazing with what you can do with it. This is basically a daily driver for me, when I use it for learning or for work.
Combined with Teams, ClipClip, and draw.io, it's a powerful suite of productivity.
Unfortunately, it doesn't get 5-stars? Why? Because Microsoft has been pushing heavily on the UWP/Store version on Windows, which is not as powerful as the original. They've also done something to the macOS app, which is much more limited than the Windows version.
Owned by ((Microsoft)) Stay away from it.
Mac version is terrible...
When the notion is great, I use OneNote like the old Word with simple functions.