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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 38)
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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.
March 07, 2023

OneNote

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
OneNote allows us to take digital hand written notes with clients converting notes into the CRM easily and effectively. It allows additional notes to be inserted into previous notes, time stamps for industry compliance and best of all convert the notes to PDF at the end. It works naturally within the Microsoft Office environment and industry specific software platforms
  • Note taking
  • Handwritten notes
  • Convert notes to PDF easily
  • Sometimes notebooks and certain pages are hard to find but the search function assist with this
Handwritten notes are helpful during client meetings and the best part is having the program handy without worrying about pen and paper. At the end the notes are easily converted to PDF instead of worrying about scanning.
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 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is used by everyone in our organization - field employees, estimators, project managers, and even our president uses it! OneNote helps us keep all of our information concise, while also letting us separate based on topic. OneNote has been a tremendous help to our company.
  • Organizes
  • Compresses
  • Aesthetically Pleasing
  • Integration
  • Advertising
  • Technical Support
OneNote is the perfect solution for anyone that loves to take notes but doesn't love all of the paper clutter that comes with it. With OneNote, users are able to create and organize notebooks based on topic. This keeps everything in the same place, while also allowing the user to distinguish between different topics.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
OneNote is being used on an individual basis throughout the organization. Because it is now freely available, many users use it as their preferred note-taking platform for jotting down notes, action items, and capturing other content for later consumption. OneNote enjoys integration with the Microsoft Office suite of tools and as a result, users enjoy integration with OneDrive for Cloud syncing and other benefits.
  • This is good at capturing multiple sources of input - drawings, web clippings, graphics, and others. This enables you to enrich your notes with any and all relevant content, without necessarily needing to remember where it came from.
  • Share the notes with my colleagues.
  • Ability to save audio notes.
  • Ability for my colleagues to update the notes.
  • SSL handling.
  • feature for my colleagues/team members to update the notes.
  • Dev tools all should be based on the eclipse side
1. 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.
2. OneNote can be used for multiple purposes. It definitely improves my daily productivity and thereby improves performance.
3. Notes security is top notch. Starting at the network port level down to field level encryption.


Jill Liegghio | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use OneNote for personal note taking as well as creating shared notebooks for different teams and projects. Our team note books include sections for meeting notes, work instructions, frequently used sites and contact information. As a manager, I have sections for future team and project strategies as well as staff pages for information tracking and development planning.
  • OneNote provides a safe space for data storage. If you’re someone who needs to write things down, this is a much safer replacement.
  • It allows data to be well organized in pages, sections and sub-sections.
  • You’re able to send notes to attending via email with a simple click.
  • You can create shared note books for collaborative data sharing.
  • Shared notebooks can be added to your personal notebook with real time syncing.
  • You can add links to frequently used sites that can be accessed with a click.
  • Your OneNote books are backed up into the cloud and can be accessed through mobile devices.
  • It has a cool new feature for simple math that will calculate formulas when typed into a page.
  • The cloud version of the software - which can be added to Teams sites has limited features and isn’t as easy to navigate. It would be great if this version had more features.
  • You can create templates for recurring notes - like meetings. However, saving something as a template is not easy to find in the software. I always have to look this up on the internet.
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.
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
OneNote is being used by our organization to manage the employee documents in a secure and organized manner. It's very convenient to update and access them at any place, and it helps the HR job get done easier and quicker.
  • Accessibility and easy to collaborate.
  • One place to store all the documents, pictures.
  • 5GB free space storage.
  • Easy to organize and saves lot of time in finding the files and sorting them.
  • More free space storage can be provided when compared with other competitors like Google.
  • UI can be improved little better.
  • Activity log feature can be integrated to track the changes happening on a folder lever.
  • Machine learning feature integrating natural processing language to find the files.
OneNote has a great UI and is a simple and robust solution to manage files from a centralized location. This can be used for both professional as well as personal purposes for managing the documents, pictures, and other files from any place.
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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is being used on an individual basis throughout the organization. Because it is now freely available, many users use it as their preferred note-taking platform for jotting down notes, action items, and capturing other content for later consumption. OneNote enjoys integration with the Microsoft Office suite of tools and as a result, users enjoy integration with OneDrive for Cloud syncing and other benefits.
  • OneNote handles cloud sync across multiple devices extremely well. It syncs my notes between my Home computer, my work computer, my iPad, and my iPhone all without issue.
  • OneNote's system for organizing notes is very hierarchical which is beneficial if you think that way. Personally, I find it easy to organize my notes by Notebook, Section, and the headings for each entry, enabling a simple yet very well organized note taking system.
  • OneNote is also good at capturing multiple sources of input - drawings, web clippings, graphics, and others. This enables you to enrich your notes with any and all relevant content, without necessarily needing to remember where it came from.
  • OneNote could improve on its web clipping features. Evernote still beats it in terms of robustness, but OneNote is sufficient for most purposes.
  • OneNote could also improve on its tagging system. Its the other major way of categorizing notes, which Evernote uses to great effect, but OneNote de-emphasizes this in favor of a hierarchical ordering.
  • This is a silly point, but it drives me mad. OneNote's free-form editing on pages, meaning you can click anywhere and start editing makes for sloppier notes that aren't as well aligned. This could be an enjoyable feature for some, but for me, I like my pages orderly.
OneNote is extremely well suited if you have Notes that generally fall into less than, say, 10 categories. That makes it easy to set up 10 different notebooks, or 10 different sections within a single notebook for those topics. Any more than that, and the hierarchical model starts to break down, and that's where tag-based organization becomes stronger. However, if you have a small number of categories, I prefer the hierarchical way that OneNote organizes, making it generally pretty easy to find the content you were looking for.
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.
Jill Dickert | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use OneNote throughout the organization for a variety of needs. My department has created product and operation guides using the platform. It is a great collaborative tool as we are all owners of different products and can utilize the workbook feature to create a comprehensive manual that is easily updated and shared to multiple users.
  • Offers collaboration for multiple users to work on a product
  • Excellent tool for taking notes at a conference
  • Keeps documents organized in a searchable manner
  • I really don't see any needed areas of improvement
OneNote is definitely well suited for creating process documents for a manual or other type of guidebook for a large audience. I also personally found it incredibly helpful when attending conferences as I was able to devote a section to each session. OneNote allows the user to easily organize files and update pages. The searchability features are super helpful too.
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.

December 17, 2018

Review: OneNote

Chris Hecox | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is a powerful tool for personal note taking and client organization. OneNote makes locating specific notes easy using tags and search functions. I use OneNote personally and know others that use it as well.
  • OneNote has an excellent organizational system. Users can create a multitude of folders and subfolders, then drop whichever notes and files into each that they'd like. It's quick and easy to create notes and begin typing away. You can also draw images or insert pictures and hyperlinks.
  • OneNote has a great mobile app. You will need to wait for it to sync, but once this is done, you are able to take notes on the go, or reference notes taken on your laptop/PC.
  • OneNote makes locating notes/files easy and fast. You can search for keywords and instantly be able to reference any notable files or notes you've taken. Finding specific information is extremely fast, which makes for quickly referencing things in meetings on demand.
  • OneNote's interface is very quick to learn. It is not dissimilar to Office and other software, so the learning curve is short.
  • OneDrive can sync into OneNote, making for fast usability between the two.
  • You can import catalogs of notes from other users, but this process is not an easy one. It messes up some of the functionality of previous notes, and it's not user friendly to import. This is mitigated by sharing your notebook with another user instead of exporting it. This process is simple, but if you want a separate copy of a catalog, it's not easy to do.
  • You are able to click anywhere into a note to begin typing in that location. It's a nice feature because it's more freeflow than other document process programs (Word or Google Docs) but it's a learning curve, honestly. You won't think much of it at first, but if you prefer a more straightforward document style, it's a bit jarring.
OneNote is great for note taking for personal use. It's good for referencing clients as well. I imagine it could be useful in a small business to help take notes on what certain clients are expecting and how to address them when meeting together. This could be useful to share among business partners as they prepare for meetings and for them to be mindful of how best to be respectful and effective.

I find it's most useful for personal note taking and organizing data.
Joel Brache | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
OneNote is used to capture notes throughout the whole organization. Many employees open multiple notebooks in OneNote so that they can share information between departments and so that they can segregate information appropriately. We use OneNote as a tool for capturing meeting notes, project information, account information, and just about anything a user wants to keep track of. With OneNote syncing across all of a user's devices, it opens up the ability for employees to look up information wherever they are and whenever they need it.

Now that we have deployed Office 365, the use of OneNote has increased as has the overall productivity of our employees. Not only are notes now on the cloud and no longer on individual computers, but it is much easier to share notes, restore them, and keep them up to date. I always have multiple notebooks open so that I can separate any personal notes from my business notes. I often find myself looking up information on my phone that I entered on my computer. This is extremely helpful in meetings and when I'm out of the office or on my own personal time.
  • OneNote synchronizes across platforms very quickly. I often find that notes entered, or updated, on my desktop are synchronized to my laptop and smartphone well before I ever open them up to access the information.
  • OneNote has apps for just every major platform available. This includes Windows, iOS, and Android. The web app has plenty of features so you won't feel let down if you have to access your notebooks through a browser.
  • The multimedia features of OneNote are wonderful. I can draw pictures, add sound bites, add videos, add files, and much more. This helps me capture the full context of a note, including any references that I might need, all within the note itself. I don't have to go outside of OneNote to find a video clip, logo, or soundbite.
  • It is not always clear where your OneNote files are kept. I prefer to keep all my OneNote files in the cloud, but the actual location of those files in OneDrive can sometimes be a mystery. If I install OneNote on my home computer, I have to open up my work OneNote in the browser and then sync it to my PC. I'm not able to find and open the file in OneDrive through File Explorer.
  • The ability to find notebooks that are shared with you is getting better, but it can sometimes be difficult to locate the right one. I often see duplicate notebooks and end up opening up the wrong one. Would be great if Microsoft only showed you links to notebooks that were actually available to you.
  • Microsoft is shifting away from OneNote 2016 and moving people on to OneNote that comes native with Windows 10. The interface is different enough that I don't like it. I am staying with OneNote 2016 because of the ease of seeing multiple notebooks open at the same time and being able to get to the exact information I need quickly. If you don't like the native OneNote built into Windows 10, you won't like the future of OneNote.
Because the information is encrypted, I choose to keep account information (user names and passwords) in OneNote. I segregate my corporate and personal account information into separate notebooks so if one Notebook is compromised, I don't compromise all my account information. That segregation is one of the features I like the most since I can have a notebooks open for personal, business, personal business, and a shared family at the same time. I like the ability to segregate information and fine OneNote well suited for managing segregated information.

If you are not using the cloud to synchronize your OneNote notebooks, I think OneNote becomes less useful. Being able to access your information across devices is a particular strength to me. OneNote will let you keep information local only, so if that's how you want to roll, you can do that too.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my current organization, OneNote is installed as part of the Office suite but not promoted or encouraged to use. At my previous company, as an organization, we used it for notetaking, storing documents, and team collaboration.
  • It is a very easy notetaking platform. It allows the user to create their own electronic notebook, organizing it in sections and pages. It autosaves as well.
  • It integrates with Microsoft Office suite very well, especially Outlook. Content can be initiated from other Office applications and sent to OneNote. I particularly liked bringing scheduled meeting information in Outlook directly into OneNote before taking meeting minutes or personal notes.
  • If your organization uses SharePoint, then it can be a great collaboration tool. Notebooks can be shared among teams to collaborate and share notes, ideas, and documents.
  • I would like to see some sort of validated version where notebook entries could be published in some kind of locked-down fashion inside an enterprise version, and have digital signatures built in for legal purposes. For example in a research laboratory environment.
  • Easier video and audio recording capture right into the notebook.
  • Ability to play a video file that is stored in a OneNote page.
OneNote is definitely well suited to take notes, as if you were taking notes in a spiral notebook or a composition notebook. What makes it much more powerful is that it can be edited at any time, and it is searchable.

It is less appropriate if used as a document storage library. I have seen teams store files directly in OneNote notebooks to share files, but this might cause storage issues as the OneNote notebook file itself will grow very large.
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
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I utilize OneNote to make notes, take meeting minutes, document changes, etc. It allows me to keep everything in one place between my devices. It helps solve the problem of being organized and being able to look back to see what was agreed upon or the direction.
  • It does well for note-taking and organization. It allows me to label and color code everything--making information easy to find
  • It does well with synchronization across devices. I am able to take notes on my computer or phone and always have them with me in one centralized place.
  • It does well with ease of use. It is a very simple software with little to no learning curve.
  • OneNote could improve by allowing users to create a customized note template.
  • It can improve by allowing graphic design orientation features like guidelines and snap lines.
  • It can be improved by letting users import document links into the notes window so it is easy to track a topic.
OneNote is well suited for meeting minutes and general note taking. It is not well suited for anything that will need to be printed or presented.
Matt Smedley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I primarily use OneNote as it is part of our Microsoft Office 365 Suite. We typically use it as a form of Wiki - where we might share information on certain products that we sell or support. We use it to take notes in meetings and share with the team or to collaborate on a variety of projects and initiatives.

Personally, I use Evernote for capturing day to day notes and have for many years, but OneNote is getting more use by me because it is easy to capture and share content with colleagues on a Corporate approved solution.
  • Collaboration with colleagues - edit the same doc in real-time - leverage as a repository for knowledge sharing
  • With iPad app and Apple Pencil, you can take handwritten notes and quickly organize them
  • Syncs seamlessly with OneDrive
  • I find the organization of the notebooks, sections and pages a little clunky compared to Evernote.
  • Not quite as intuitive as Evernote for me
OneNote is well suited to group collaboration and sharing content and notes related to projects, initiatives and the like. Can also be used similarly to a wiki, where people can create a page, list FAQs, and other general knowledge sharing. I would think of it primarily as an "internal" tool rather than an external one.
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.
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 :)
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