Microsoft OneNote icon
Microsoft OneNote icon

Microsoft OneNote

 1134 likes

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.

Microsoft OneNote screenshot 1

License model

  • FreemiumProprietary

Platforms

  • Mac  OS X 10.9 or later
  • Windows
  • Online
  • Android  Requires Android 4.0 and up
  • iPhone  Requires iOS 7.0 or later
  • Chrome OS
  • Windows Phone  System-integrated. Must not be installed.
  • iPad  Requires iOS 7.0 or later
  • Apple Watch
  • Android Wear
  • Kindle Fire
3.4 / 5 Avg rating (46)
1134 likes
55comments

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Integrations

  1.  Calendar
  2. IFTTT icon  IFTTT
  3. Microsoft Outlook icon  Outlook
  4.  OneLogin

Features

  1.  Handwritten Notes
  2.  Web Clipper
  3.  Visual Organization
  4.  Hierarchical Structure
  5.  Text formatting
  6.  Insert images
  7.  Works Offline
  8.  Cloud Sync
  9.  Support for styluses
  10.  Unicode Math Support
  11.  Sketching
  12.  File Sync
  13.  Dark Mode
  14.  Audio Recording
  15.  Knowledge Management
  16.  Embedded media
  17.  Pressure Sensitivity
  18.  Notebook
  19.  Real-time sync
  20.  Linking capability
  21.  Team Collaboration
  22.  Unlimited Canvas Area
  23.  Multiple Account support
  24.  Data export/import
  25.  Freehand Writing
  26.  Protected by Password
  27.  Full-Text Search
  28.  OCR
  29.  Subtasks
  30.  WYSIWYG Support
  31.  Photo Import
  32.  Dynamic typing
  33.  Search by tags
  34.  PDF OCR
  35.  LaTeX Math
  36.  Screenshot OCR
  37.  Auto adjusting tables
  38.  Folder Hierarchy
  39.  No dependencies
  40.  Automatic Tagging
  41.  Sections
  42.  Legacy Firefox Addon
  43.  Auto-saving
  44.  Tabbed interface
  45.  Hyperlinks
  46.  Integrated Search
  47.  Voice recognition
  48.  Better formatting
  49.  Handwriting recognition

Microsoft OneNote News & Activities

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Comments and Reviews

   
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Comment summary: Microsoft OneNote is praised for its rich note-taking capabilities, syncing functionality, and flexibility across platforms, making it a top choice for comprehensive organization. However, criticisms include its dependency on Microsoft ecosystem, privacy concerns, and changes in platform versions causing compatibility issues. Despite potential drawbacks like the clunky Android app and limited markdown support, many users find it indispensable, especially for integration with other Microsoft services.
Kagerjay
  
Top positive commentJul 7, 2017

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:

Evernote icon Evernote Laverna icon Laverna Google Keep icon Google Keep Simplenote icon Simplenote Google Docs icon Google Docs

OneNote has an evolved form of the native windows Snipping Tool icon 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

Greenshot icon Greenshot ShareX icon ShareX Dynalist icon Dynalist Microsoft Paint icon Microsoft Paint draw.io icon draw.io

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]

4
Anamon
  
Top negative commentApr 24, 2018

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.

3 replies
coth

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.

Reply written Jun 10, 2018

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Anamon

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.

Reply written Apr 16, 2020

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k 4u

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

Reply written Apr 19, 2022

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21
dkshsat
  
Negative comment
Pending approval • Edited Jul 27, 2024

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.

0
Shaz Shah
  
Positive commentJun 6, 2024

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:

  • Evernote - the acquisitions and further limitations to the free plan turned me off.
  • Simplenote - this is a Markdown-based app. So you won't be able to use a stylus with it.
  • Samsung Notes - Don't get me wrong, this is pretty awesome, but it looks you into the Samsung Ecosystem (yes, you need a Samsung-made Laptop). The alternative integration with OneNote is a bit janky for my tastes.
  • Apple Notes - Again, like Samsung Notes, you're locked into Apple's ecosystem.
  • Google Keep - No thanks.

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.

0
arhabjb434
  
Negative commentAug 14, 2023

Owned by ((Microsoft)) Stay away from it.

0
NoteNinja
  
Negative commentAug 7, 2023

Mac version is terrible...

0
Po Ho
  
Negative commentJun 9, 2023

When the notion is great, I use OneNote like the old Word with simple functions.

0
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What is Microsoft OneNote?

Microsoft OneNote, part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot icon 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 icon OneNote Online, is also available as part of Office Online icon Office Online. Only the online version is free.

Official Links

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 3.4 (46 ratings)
  • Alternatives

    87 alternatives listed
  • News

    10 news article related to Microsoft OneNote
  • Supported Languages

    • English
    • Arabic
    • Catalan; Valencian
    • Croatian
    • Czech
    • Danish
    • Dutch
    • Finnish
    • French
    • German
    • Greek
    • Hebrew
    • Hindi
    • Hungarian
    • Indonesian
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Malay
    • Norwegian Bokmål
    • Polish
    • Portuguese
    • Romanian
    • Russian
    • Chinese
    • Slovak
    • Spanish
    • Swedish
    • Thai
    • Turkish
    • Ukrainian
    • Vietnamese

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Our users have written 55 comments and reviews about Microsoft OneNote, and it has gotten 1134 likes

Microsoft OneNote was added to AlternativeTo by Ola Johansson on Mar 12, 2009 and this page was last updated Feb 8, 2025. Microsoft OneNote is sometimes referred to as Onenote, OneNote Mobile.