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OneNote

OneNote

Overview

What is OneNote?

Microsoft's OneNote is a digital note-taking app, supporting photos, annotating, web page clipping, emailing, and synchronizing notes across devices.

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Recent Reviews

OneNote

9 out of 10
March 07, 2023
OneNote allows us to take digital hand written notes with clients converting notes into the CRM easily and effectively. It allows …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Microsoft OneNote

Free

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Onetastic for OneNote

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Demo oneNote

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Office 2010 - OneNote 2010 demo för skola

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Microsoft OneNote 2010 Demo - Organize your Notes

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SharePoint 2010 Create OneNote Documentation Library

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OneNote Demo - Windows 8 RT Surface

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Product Details

What is OneNote?

OneNote Competitors

OneNote Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft's OneNote is a digital note-taking app, supporting photos, annotating, web page clipping, emailing, and synchronizing notes across devices.

Evernote are common alternatives for OneNote.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.5.

The most common users of OneNote are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(898)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 34)
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Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used it for content development within Teams. Separated out different projects in the tabs etc. it was alright, the only thing that was tricky is that the syncing wasn’t as real time as we would’ve hoped.
  • Content Development
  • Project Brainstorming
  • Organization
  • Syncing issues
  • More formatting options within it, like Notion has
  • More variation in content boxes
Well suited for Marketing teams who cannot invest in more robust programs like Notion. If you need something easy and really simple that’s integrated into Teams.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use OneNote on a daily bases with my organization for meetings, tasks, ideas, technical writing, notes, reminders and schedules to name a few. It automatically saves so I don't have to along with saving a backup wherever I need it to be. I connect it to my phone so I have it everywhere I go since it is connected to OneDrive. I can add emails and pictures along with other programs into it to help me when needed. It connects to browser and server links so I know where to look up procedures. It lets me categorize my jobs and it is easy to search for them with the Search tool. I can record notes and keep them all in one place. I can share my notes with others. If I am working on a tablet I can even write my notes down in OneNote using my stylus.You can draw, sketch, highlight, and format in this program. Enter graphs and spreadsheets, presentations, along with videos. You can lock pages or folders using a secure password. I use this for my sensitive items. This program is a great knowledge base product to use for technical instructions and training. I even use it for my yearly Goals and it keeps me on track to set and complete these goals. I have never has a problem with this product that needs to be addressed.
  • Organizes my thoughts and ideas
  • Minutes on our team meetings
  • switches from one device to another easily and quickly
  • Saves instantly
  • Password protected pages and folders
  • searching for what you are looking for easily
  • adding graphs, pictures, recordings, videos and much more
  • Drawings and sketches are very easy to do from a tablet
  • You can't send emails or meetings from Outlook to OneNote
  • Recover deleted notes if there is no backup
  • Schedule a meeting from OneNote to Outlook
  • Share your OneNote book thru Teams
This product is a great organizer for your tasks, thoughts, and documentation. It works great to share with your coworkers and your other devices and to have them all in one place. Password protect your folders and pages for privacy. You can insert emails, spreadsheets, graphs and charts, along with videos and pictures. It can't create a meeting to your Outlook calendar or Teams meetings.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Being a Managed Services Provider I need to take a lot of notes and store most of them. I wanted software that would replace having to use so much paper and than having those papers filed away which takes time and valuable space in a one room office. OneNote solves all of that by being my only note taking software as well as organizing all my notes in digital notebooks.
  • Simple and easy to use interface
  • Organize notes just like a traditional notebook binder with tabs
  • Able to see and use all notebooks on mobile phone
  • Implement MFA ability to specific notebooks instead of using a password
OneNote is best for individuals or organizations that want to reduce paper and paper storage such as notebooks and binders. Also good for those that need access to such notes on the go using a mobile phone, tablet, or laptop. May not work well if the notes you have are highly confidential and contain sensitive information.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Onenote as a personal checklist for our organization. It is also used within the department for collaboration on projects, tracking meeting agendas and notes, and the status of projects. We use it every day within the department to keep projects on track an
  • Creating separate tabs and sub-tabs to help organize
  • The ability to copy and link pages to be shared with other members (even without OneNote access)
  • The ability to share Notebooks with groups within the department
  • Creating and editing tables could be improved. Would be helpful if rows could be hidden in tables
  • The table's copy & paste options are cumbersome, often resulting in incorrect cell placement
OneNote helps with department-wide collaboration on projects and meetings. The notebooks sync quickly allowing multiple users to see edits and notes in real-time. The ability to add attachments, photos, and links, all in one place helps with organization. It also works very well as a task list/checklist with the ability to flag tasks that will sync to outlook and provide reminders. There is also the option to add checkboxes, images, and highlighting for visual reminders.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use OneNote daily for everything from taking basic general notes to recording meeting minutes and attendance for our project meetings. OneNote is very handy for offline note taking as well as being able to share entire notebooks with colleagues that we all can add to whenever we need. This software is great for collaboration.
  • Allows collaboration
  • Easy notetaking
  • Great for keeping you organized
  • Layout tabs could be better
  • More toolbar options
OneNote is well suited for digital notetaking. The software helps keep all of your notes organized in one place so you never have to carry around multiple notepads or writing utensils which take up space and may get lost. OneNote can be backed up on OneDrive which means you will never lose your notes and they are available on all of your devices immediately.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I mainly use OneNote to backup data from Facebook (posts in my own small group) and to use each note (each post is a new note) as a to-do list putting them in different sections of a notebook once the issue is raised in it has been handled. I use Pabbly to integrate between the two.
  • It has Notebooks and sections and then individual notes allowing organisation.
  • They are multi-format - Pictures, words, formatting and can move things around the page.
  • The information is accessible both online and offline once synced to the computer (Windows 11).
  • It has image searching.
  • It would be helpful to be able to work with multiple notes at the same time.
  • Search isn't always perfect.
  • It'd be great to be able to edit the order that the notes are in based on a specific format (date/name/format etc).
It's appropriate where someone is using notes across multiple devices, has a Microsoft office plan, and is just needing it for general notetaking using multi formats. It's not so helpful for someone who doesn't have a Microsoft office plan and needs to deal with multiple notes at the same time or sort by specific measures.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use OneNote across the whole organization. Associates use it to organize their workflow.
  • Autosave feature saves as you go so you never lose work.
  • Tags are really helpful. Note things as you go and access them later with Find Tags.
  • OneNote works with Outlook so you can email pages directly from a notebook.
  • Create tasks that sync with Outlook.
  • I would like to have more Word formatting options available.
Using OneNote has helped me organize my workload at the office and at home. I work more efficiently and effectively with all my notes in one place.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our department is using OneNote. I am pretty sure many people in my organization use OneNote. It is an excellent program for multi-user collaboration. I use it to create training manuals so that I can share them with my team. I also use it to manage my own workload. We can make notes, drawings, screen clippings, attach emails, and audio commentaries, which is excellent.
  • It's great that I can use it on Android, Apple, and Windows devices. It syncs perfectly with phone, desktop so i can access any information anytime.
  • The user interface is simple and thought out. Very user-friendly.
  • You can take notes - you can draw or write or record your voice in the middle of your notes as you wish.
  • It allows you to link different pages, add calendar, add notes, create templates, and save them.
  • It can add some formatting options, like headers, dark mode, and some organizing features which are included on the desktop app.
  • It doesn't have Integration with Google calendar & Gdrive.
OneNote is well suited if your purpose is to take notes, share with the team as it allows you to tag people, notes, calendars, etc. It syncs well with your desktop app, so you can access anything anywhere you want. I like how many different formatting options there are, and its syncing ability. I use one note for business meetings for note-taking, and I love how I can upload screenshots or pictures, charts, and graphs, etc.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use OneNote individually, departmentally, and interdepartmentally throughout the entire organization. It is an excellent tool for capturing notes, meeting minutes, checklists, and project-related tasks. It enables collaboration and improves communication by allowing shared notebooks that multiple users can edit at the same time. It also automatically tags edits with the user's initials who made them, thereby providing a basic level of traceability.
  • Creating task lists and daily notes that can link to Outlook.
  • Generating collaborative content that is easy to search and edit.
  • Creating "live" work instructions that can be updated and maintained.
  • Creating basic wireframes and prototypes for software development.
  • 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
It is well suited for capturing weekly departmental task lists. For example, each week we create a new page in a shared departmental notebook. In this new page, each department member enters his/her top 3 accomplishments for the week and the top 3 things which the member will attempt to accomplish in the coming week. We then use this page during our Monday morning stand-up meeting and it helps provide an agenda, structure, and discussion points for the meeting.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the entire Microsoft Office suite at our company and everything ties into Office. We use Outlook for email, Skype for Business as our chat/virtual meeting environment, OneDrive as our cloud storage, and of course OneNote as the preferred note-taking utility. Everyone in the company has a license for Office, including OneNote and it is the main utility that is supported by our IT department.
  • Integration with other Microsoft Office products.
  • Syncing between multiple accounts if needed.
  • Syncing between desktop and mobile applications.
  • The ability for multiple users to collaborate on the same notebook.
  • The software seems a bit heavy and takes up space, which seems normal for Microsoft software.
  • I have to re-enter my login information frequently to keep syncing between different computers and mobile applications.
  • The clip to OneNote tool is a good start but it would be nice to also have a small "sticky notes" type application that ties into OneNote.
If you use Microsoft Office products then OneNote should be your go-to tool for note-taking. You can have private notebooks that can be sorted by projects and pages (meaning you can organize a LOT of notes quickly) and you can also share certain pages with other people so you can collaborate together. It also tracks changes between different users, similar to Word, which makes it easier to know who made certain changes and when. If you are not a user of Office then there are other options that may integrate into your work utilities better, but for my company, it's a no brainer.
September 10, 2019

OneNote is the one you need

Lukas Sundahl, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used in our department to keep track of various contract documents. It helps us organize everything that relates to a specific contract in one place. It helps keep everything organized and in a format that allows for expedited retrieval. The time stamp feature allows us to organize content so the most recent updates are at the top.
  • It is so easy to organize your data by topic.
  • OneNote is user friendly and it can quickly be picked up by people who have never worked with OneNote before.
  • The features are very similar to other Microsoft Office products which makes using it and sharing with other employees simple.
  • It is an affordable way to group and organize company information.
  • It would be nice if OneNote had some more robust table features.
  • I would like to see Linked Notes with an improved way to connect to Excel.
  • OneNote could have more drawing tools added to make it that much better.
OneNote is well suited when you have data that can be organized by department, job, contract, etc. Each tab in OneNote allows you to quickly add documents and hyperlinks to quickly get users the data they would need instead of navigating a shared network drive. OneNote allows you to quickly create new Notebooks allowing users to move to a new notebook at a specific time interval.
Kaleb-John Loo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is great for taking notes and sharing them within your company. It allows for a lot of customization and has many macros and plugins that make note-taking very efficient. Then, the information can be given to anyone by simply sharing the notebook. OneNote also allows users to access their notebooks from any computer as long as they have access to their account. This means that you can take your notes anywhere and work on them at your leisure. OneNote provides a lot of options and is very easy to use to organize notes.
  • Sharing notebooks with anyone.
  • Sync account on any computer and access notes.
  • Easy to use interface allows for easy organization.
  • Shortcuts for linking.
  • Use of templates.
  • Different versions of OneNote have changes that take getting used to.
  • There is a difference between the OneNote Windows App and the OneNote program that seem restrictive.
  • There are things you can do in Word that it seems like you should be able to do in OneNote.
OneNote is good when you want to keep an ongoing record of notes. It has a standard organizational structure to start off with that will be sufficient for a large majority of note keeping. It is extremely useful when you want to maintain your notes on any device without having to worry about saving separate documents for each note and then having to worry about being able to access the notes from another computer. OneNote, however, does not replace the other products in the Office Suite such as Word or Excel.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is used by several of the sales agents in my department as a digital file folder. It becomes home to all the important information needed for a sale: web research, budget projections, proposals, important emails from clients, brochures for the client, and anything essential to the travel project we are working on. It is a wonderful way to combine information from different programs into one location. For example, you can easily read emails and a printout of a spreadsheet without leaving the program.
  • Data Gathering - It is extremely easy and efficient to get information into OneNote. Outlook has a button to send emails directly to the program, there are browser add-ons to clip research, and you can print to OneNote from any program. Once in the program, filing the information into the right note/tab is a sinch.
  • It is not complicated. Several of my tech-challenged coworkers, use this program with ease. I even hear comments about how much they like it.
  • The styling and formatting options of the notes are limited.
  • Sizing an embedded spreadsheet is challenging.
  • Table columns auto size unnecessarily.
OneNote is great for projects. It can hold information in notes, notebooks and various tabs. This helps keeps projects organized and the information you need just a click away. It is also easy to share information with teammates. The online, desktop and mobile versions are handy when you need a cross-platform solution for your note taking needs.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My entire organization adopted OneNote as a part of our shift to using the new suite of Office 365 applications exclusively. OneNote has helped to streamline collaboration across different organizations and business units at my company. It is an excellent tool for housing and organizing large bodies of information that can be shared with different users or be private. It serves as a scalable option to house anything from meeting notes, agendas etc., across the whole organization.
  • OneNote is very easy to navigate and is user-friendly, and Notebooks within the application are convenient to share making it easy to scale to new users who are not familiar with the platform
  • I enjoy being able to house meeting notes, agendas and other collateral content for different projects and programs with both individual stakeholders as well as with different project team using different notebooks and sections.
  • I can use OneNote to share documents, edit files and collaborate with other stakeholders offline.
  • While OneNote is easy to use overall, sharing Notebooks with different stakeholders can be challenging and I often have syncing issues with notebooks that are shared with other users.
OneNote helps improve collaboration for groups who may not all work in the same location which leads to improved business process improvement, agility and outcomes. I use OneNote to organize and collaborate around several projects and programs I manage forward that involve various stakeholders across different organizations and locations to collaborate around shared initiatives.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is installed on everyone's workstation, as part of the Office Suite. Individuals can use it as they want, as a personal productivity tool, and also some teams are using it to gather and share knowledge among the team members. In the past, project-based teams also used it as a collaboration tool, to share notes, follow-up tasks etc., but I think this use case is now fulfilled by other products, which are designed for project related collaboration.


  • 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.
  • Using the search functionality isn't comfortable; the search is run from a small text box at the corner of the window, and results are listed there as a narrow list of pages, without the context of the search-terms (no snippet, in other words). Searching by Tags is also uncomfortable and not intuitive.
  • Lacking integration with Outlook; because many people are using Outlook as their main tool for time management and self-productivity, it would have been great to have more options to export, or even better, export and link paragraphs to Outlook items like the Calendar and Tasks list.
  • Although there is an option to open an Outlook Task linked to a tag in Onenote, that isn't enough. Also, there is no option to tag people from the organization's directory, and that would have been great, especially for teams that are sharing sections.
  • The Draw options are not as far-reaching as in other Microsoft product (e.g. Word). Especially important is the option to group objects together and keep them as one image.
Organizing data and information objects, according to your own logic of structure. For example, organizing all info about the cases you are working on, so each case will have a dedicated section or a page. Collaborating with colleagues who are working together on a project, so they can share a notebook, a section, or a page, and from there share meetings notes, lists of action items, links to other resources, and more.

Daniel Cure-Boulay | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is highly recommended that all users utilize OneNote to outline, track, and share all notes/meeting minutes company-wide. This tool makes it easy to maintain all your notes so you never have to go looking.
  • Works seamlessly with Outlook so creating and sending out your meeting notes is as simple as selecting OneNote. It creates the meeting template for the meeting notes (including participants) and once you have completed the meeting, it's as simple as selecting 'share' and it sends to all participants.
  • Tracking all your meeting notes is made easy through a simple interface/structure which can be customized to your liking.
  • Can get to your meeting notes through all devices remotely.
  • There are times that formating can be difficult, especially if you're copying from other sources.
I find this tp be the perfect tool for managing meetings, taking notes, tracking, sharing and also as a high level task tracker.
Brian Hopper | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are largely a Google G- Suite company, but we use Office 365 for our Office licensing. I use OneNote for all of my daily note taking when talking to customers, prospects, leads, internal employees, and everything else. It's great because it is designed for note taking and syncs across all my devices.
  • Organizes notes logically into NoteBooks. This way I can keep certain topics separate from others but still only be a few short clicks away.
  • Syncs across all my devices seamlessly
  • Has rich formatting options, which is extremely helpful
  • The mobile app can sometimes feel clunky to use
  • The Mac OS integration is lacking compared to the Windows functionality, especially regarding shortcuts.
  • Having multiple accounts (e.g. personal and business) on one platform has caused issues in the past.
It works really well for taking longer form notes, especially compared to Google. Google Keep seems to geared more towards "sticky notes" and Google Docs isn't flexible enough for a "notebook."

Where I think Google Keep has the advantage is the sticky note type of notes, especially how you can pin them in Chrome.
Kate Bowling | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote was implemented last year as part of our company's migration to the Microsoft Office/Professional Suite. My manager helped roll out the tool from an end-user perspective. Our team provides training, both on-demand and live, for our Microsoft products, including OneNote. We are champions of the tool and try to influence other employees to use it. The ability to share notes from OneNote, edit them with team members, have notes archived and the other integrations with Microsoft tools has really enabled us to work more collaboratively. User adoption continues to grow and as people learn its capabilities, they get excited about the product. I have also purchased products (specifically a Rocketbook notebook) that is a smart notebook and using an app, can send my handwritten notes to OneNote. These types of products and tools that fully enable to work smarter plays a huge role in adoption. I really like OneNote and it's popularity continues to rise at my company.
  • Organization
  • Collaborating with colleagues
  • Easy to search within your notebook
  • OneNote app is very useful when I'm not able to use my laptop
  • I would love to have more visual organization options (borders around text boxes to distinguish notes from each other when they are all on one page).
Well suited:
  1. Team notebooks which can be shared with the team
  2. Personal notes/ideas
  3. Creating lists or tasks
Less appropriate:
  1. Ongoing team project work
  2. File storage
Gagan Kanwar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is being used by a mix of people across teams and departments. It's not being used universally by all teams and functions. OneNote is great for making and organizing meeting notes. It also has a nice iOS app, which makes your notes accessible across devices. Lastly, because it's backed by Microsoft, I feel that my information is a lot safer than it might be with a smaller company that doesn't have Microsoft's resources.
  • It makes it really easy to capture notes in different formats - text, pictures, copy & paste, videos, etc.
  • It makes it really easy to organize notes by using the concept of notebooks - which are thematic ways to organize your notes
  • The mobile app is easy to use and navigate, which means I can always have my notes with me, even if I'm not in front of my computer
  • OneNote should integrate with meeting management tools (e.g. Zoom) and automatically transcribe meetings and provide all attendees with notes
  • OneNote should integrate with workflow processing tools so that any deliverables or goals coming out of a meeting can be captured and tracked against resources & timelines
  • At a corporate level, OneNote should help companies find which employees are SME's in particular areas by analyzing their data and content
OneNote is great for making it really easy to take, organize and access your notes across devices. It's not great for collaboration (which is probably by design). Also, sometimes the interface can be a little slow to work with.
Brad Bratcher | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, my team and I use OneNote in the O365 version. We use it so that we can update our product and procedure notes and illustrations in real time. Moreover, when giving customer presentations, I have found that this is more organic and less formal than presenting a Powerpoint deck. It enables much flexibility to show the flow of the recommended solution and allow the customer and I to come closer together in understanding what we are looking to solve. The OneNote search feature enables the 'jumping around' rather than the stilted flipping through slides looking for the right thing.
  • Tabs-Enabling quick look up even without using the search feature. Also, because of the sub-tabs, items can be updated quickly and neatly.
  • Search-As the content grows, this is without a doubt one of the more used features and it does not disappoint.
  • Multi-Format and document linking. If there is something that is customer facing, I put these things into the short version when I am giving my presentations.
  • Writing - With the growth of tablets, this seems to be a no-brainer. However, I use it to overwrite illustrations. Again as with the advantage of presenting in a more natural flow, using the pen/highlighting tools to draw attention is invaluable.
  • The phone app is too 'heavy.' A large download.
  • Lists - I still keep the ToDo's on Evernote but hope that OneNote updates this to something a bit more friendly and maybe even something that can be written at the desk and then deployed to the phone.
  • The cells on top of cells sometimes are frustrating when you are copying and pasting from one document to OneNote.
Well Suited: Portfolio 'Bibles' - Just like the old 3 ring binder notebooks that salespeople used to haul around, OneNote is the digital equivalent but much more tidy and less bulky.
Less Appropriate: Generating new content. Because of its amorphous [for want of a better term] nature, it is easier to go to another application in the office suite and drag/copy over to OneNote rather than starting and finishing within OneNote.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is being used to keep track of brief activities that occur within my department. All meeting notes, to-do lists, and activities' key notes that come out of them are stored in there and then shared among all the employees that are related to each one of them. It is the easiest thing to use and share with others. This helps a lot in having things done quicker. Transmitting the message across the department is much faster without the need to personally meet the employee and discuss any changes in the activities or projects.
  • Create pages that can contain a vast amount of information in there.
  • Provides the option to share any page that you like with someone else.
  • Can create tables.
  • Can insert images.
  • Syncs perfectly with OneDrive (for those that want all their work to be on the cloud and across devices).
  • The current features are more than enough for my work, so currently there is nothing else that I would want in there. Adding more features to this application might just make it complicated and would lose its simplicity that it has currently.
OneNote is a very usable application for any kind of organization that does give brief tasks, to-do lists, or quick changes to activities of their projects and transmits them to specific employers. Since you have the majority of the Word functions in OneNote you can easily work in there as you are working on a document, and what's more positive about it is that you can share that whole page with all relevant actors that need to see the content.
Tiago Martines | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote was used individually by me in order to take notes during classes and meetings.
  • Easy to create a note/notebook any time, from any device.
  • NoteS are saved on the cloud and synced frequently.
  • More flexible than Word or another text editor to quickly create documents of different formats/media types.
  • It tries too hard to be used every time. Taskbar icon begs to be used. Sometimes I don't need OneNote.
  • Pen recognition is not as quick for handwriting as other alternatives (e.g. S-Note from Samsung on Android devices)
  • OneNote relies on OneDrive, which is does not do as great as other cloud storage providers in terms of reliability/speed
If you own a Microsoft portable device (e.g. Surface Pro) you will definitely be using OneNote all the time :)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I employ OneNote across my Windows 10 desktop, my Linux laptop (OneNote online), and on my Windows 10 Mobile device. The seamless and rapid syncing of note content across my devices is very useful and makes OneNote a great productivity tool.

One of the biggest advantages to OneNote when used stand-alone (not in the context of Office 365 or Enterprise use with Lync/etc) is the rich data that can be imported, captured, or recorded with & in OneNote. If you can see it, hear it, or think it, you can put it in OneNote with ease.
  • Cross-device syncing (I can get my notes nearly anywhere). Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and the web. Linux is a notable omission, but the OneNote webclient is acceptable for now.
  • Rich data capabilities. Photos, videos, drawings, voice recordings, files, tables, etc.
  • Ease of use is quite high. The mobile app is very smartly designed with a UI that morphs based upon orientation and screen resolution, exposing finer controls when needed.
  • Quick start-up time, especially with more recent builds of the mobile app
  • Linux support with a native program. Office for Linux wouldn't hurt, either.
  • Ability to log more rich data from various attached sensors on devices: Geolocation, temp, humidity, RSSI, etc. Anything that Windows can access.
  • Improve first-use sync/download time and experience. Toggling an option to enable background downloads of all content is not intuitive, and waiting to retrieve content when you view a note is not pleasant.
  • Better Share To OneNote functionality from Windows 10.
Any situation that calls for a centralized way to store notes and other data, OneNote is easily the best tool that I can think of. Previously, I toyed with Evernote but I found that OneNote offered me a much more pleasant experience and supported my devices better.
Alan Matson, CCNA:S, MCP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use OneNote to share and sync our important client details for job visits, etc. Instead of having to publish a full suite CRM to manage customer calls we have templates created in OneNote that include the job details and blanks for the consultants to add notes for the work done and any recommendations. These pages can then be formatted and printed to PDF to provide to customer with the fixes and recommendations from the visit. Since all data is synced anyone can pull it up and there is always a backup copy on the cloud.
  • Note sync
  • Easy collaboration
  • Cloud backup of notes
  • Ability to make templates that are shared
  • Better layout
  • Make templates easier
  • More sharing options
I think it is best suited for collaboration of project ideas. Where it would be less suited would be for someone looking for a replacement for a full fledged collaboration suite.
Ben Tusa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is available to all users in my organization. It's not something anyone is required to use. It's available as a tool and my team has adopted it as our primary means of documentation.
  • One of the best things about OneNote is the ability to quickly enter data of many types without much effort. There are many different types of intake methods from browser extensions to mobile devices and of course the traditional desktop.
  • I find it very comforting that I can quickly record information about something then go back and easily reformat it.
  • As a team we share a single OneNote so it makes updating or sharing info very simple.
  • Users can manage multiple personal OneNotes along with the one we share as a team.
  • Maybe a little better integration with native spreadsheets. Currently it appears to force your spreadsheet info into a choice of several predefined formats.
  • Page updating for our International users is definitely slow at times.
It's great for sharing info within a team but if you want to export that info it can be a bit clunky.
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