OneNote vs. PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor

In my opinion OneNote is a must for anyone who does business. It’s versatile, stable and sustainable. It can keep private information private - like passwords. It can be used for collaborative work - like standard operating procedures. It is fairly easy to use and far superior to pen and paper. When used for meeting notes, it can be flagged with icons that are searchable - like ideas or important items. You can even create Outlook tasks on the fly

Incentivized

This software handles large PDF files and has not crashed for me, unlike some other PDF software. It does what I need very well, although it has a lot of features beyond what I need. It extracts and adds documents easily and certainly does well with its search function after applying optical character recognition.

Incentivized

• Because of its flexibility and ability to hold different types of content (text, images, tables), it is a great tool for collecting content from different resources and organizing it in one place.
• Technical support analysts are using sections for their support case analysis; they paste pieces of logs, screen-shots, document their steps in troubleshooting etc., all in one section, to get the full picture yet stay organized.
• The logic of content structure; Notebook>Section>Page>Paragraph, allows you to manage and collect all needed information by the areas of the user's responsibility. For example; each of my projects has its own section, in which each page is a task.

Incentivized

• Intuitive an easy to understand interface
• Fast
• Good value for the price

Incentivized

• The table editing tools are too simplistic and lack the features found in other Office products.
• Some content loses its rich text formatting when being pasted into OneNote. A workaround is to paste the content first into Outlook or Word and then copy/pasting that into OneNote.
• Microsoft is moving away from a local install of OneNote, which means notebooks have to be in the cloud in Office 2019. This will actually reduce the usefulness of OneNote in some environments and opens the door to competitor products.
• Update: Microsoft has now announced that it will continue to support OneNote 2016 through 2023. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Your-OneNote/ba-p/954922

Incentivized

• Have the ability to add a little more customization (like font sizes in Typewriter tool, etc).
• Have the ability to export individual pages into separate PDFs.
• Have the ability to easily resize.

Incentivized

As this is not a compulsory tool in our organization, I would say all depends on the decision makers, however since this is a part of MS Office, I am sure we will have it for as long as we will possibly need it. However, I would not be so sure, if it was a separate product

I find OneNote incredibly usable. I'm fairly middle of the road when it comes to tech savvy-ness. The platform was very easy to learn and explore. I like that OneNote is no clunky and offers a clean interface. This is important when it comes to deciding if a tool is usable for multiple people.

Incentivized

It does everything I need, such as OCR, redaction, Bates stamping, bookmarking, and handling large PDF files without crashing. It also does well with the extraction and addition of documents.

Incentivized

Overall, I rate OneNote's performance highly. In general, notebooks, sections and pages load quickly. OneNote integrates with other apps and info ca easily be shared/copied to and from the tool to other tools. Moreover, Notebooks tend to sync quickly meaning shared notebooks are up to date almost immediately provided there are no syncing issues.

Incentivized

Performance wise, PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor is flawless. It runs fast, and I haven't experienced any immediately crashing. The reports save quickly, and the document size is never an issue. It saves into a regular PDF, and we're able to open it on any other program or computer. All text boxes, features, and headers show up flawlessly on other programs.

Incentivized

Since it is part of Microsoft Office and used across the globe there are a lot of support options available. It's quickest to just do a google search which will have plenty of articles to help you since there are so many OneNote users but as an Office customer you also have access to Microsoft support and I have had good experiences with their support (probably because I'm with a large company who is a large customer to them).

Incentivized

The application had no issues (we did not contact support) and that's why I give a 10.

Incentivized

I tried using Evernote and it is an equally usable tool, however, I prefer the interface and capabilities of OneNote. OneNote seems much easier to use and understand. I think that may primarily be because OneNote is a Microsoft application and I am very used to using Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, etc. I also use OneNote to keep my grocery list. It does as good of a job as the grocery list applications out there, only I like the flexibility I have with OneNote and how I specifically do my shopping.

Incentivized

PDF Xchange hits a sweet spot for me and my users. It is powerful, includes a full suite of creation, markup, and management tools. It is very affordable.

Bluebeam is too much that isn't print and PDF related. It is EXPENSIVE ... more than $300 per person before almost mandatory additional training.

PDF Creator is good for PDF creation. It doesn't include markup and management tools.

• OneNote has become our organizational standard method of taking electronic notes (though some still prefer pen and paper.) It has been a zero cost outlay due to its freely available nature.
• Its integration with other Microsoft Office products makes it easy to share notes and content between products, allowing for easy collaboration where needed.
• OneNote's integration with OneDrive ensures that individual's notes are always safe and secure, taking away the tedious responsibility of backup from the user, and makes it happen seamlessly in the background.

Incentivized

• PDF XChange costs around $50-75 per person depending on the version.