Microsoft OneNote Ratings and Reviews

I am an iPhone user who first used OneNote at work using Microsoft. I loved the organization of it better than the systems I’d used before. I then migrated my notes from elsewhere. I recently got a tablet and stylus and OneNote has really leveled up in functionality.
Now I use OneNote and Apple notes exclusively. Two of my favorite recent uses:
1. I was watching a master therapist working on a training film with friends. There was a transcript for the video. I uploaded that into a note in my experiential family therapy section. Then I got to sit back and enjoy, and take notes directly on the transcript without feeling like I also needed to pause to write out some key sentences I would have wished I could quote if not having the transcript. That thing you get to do with a paper copy: doodle, highlight, jot words and phrases, exclamation points. All there. But no various notebooks to carry around and make sure not to forget when coming to an event like that.
2. I draw tarot cards most mornings as part of a daily/devotional practice. I did this before the iPad and Apple Pencil, but I wrote notes in a paper notebook. NOW with those tools and OneNote, I can hold up the tablet, snap a picture of my spread, and write notes directly around the image of the cards. Because of this, I notice I am learning the card associations more quickly.

I have been using One Note for years and years. It is amazing how many ways I use it in my personal and work life! It has dramatically cut down on the paper in my life. I teach a college personal finance class and highly recommend it as a way to store and keep copies of personal records (e.g., driver’s licenses, pics of auto license plates, insurance cards, health history and passports). I also keep contact info on credit cards in case one is lost or stolen. For electronics, it is a handy place to store passwords, user ids and software reminders. When I travel I couldn’t live without OneNote as a means to keep track of my itinerary, lodging/transportation reservations, suggested sites to see, and so much more! Also use it as a gardening tool to keep track of what I have planted with names, pics, sun/shade preferences, care tips, etc. Would you believe this is just a sampling of the many ways I find the software useful. And what really makes the software great is its search feature. Everything is at my fingertips by just typing a a few letters and I get a quick list of related notes. Installed on my mobile phone, everything goes with me for whenever I need it!

I honestly didn’t like it at first, but I have grown to like it. Some features that people will want is an audio recording function to play back lectures. Notability does a great job at that, Some improvements for example is one note is the lag between writing and typing. It just doesn’t feel smooth sometimes. Also, lag and exporting of images is not good. I want to move images freely, spin them around, zoom in and out without any hassle. Last thing, is the paging of it. *IMPORTANT TO HIGHLIGHT*-The paging of one note is weird that I wish it is like notability and good notes 5 like page 1, 2, etc of page breaks. Then, show the pages like 1-10 on the side that I can find, instead of me scrolling down to find that particular page. **IMPORTANT TO HIGHLIGHT*-The “endless page” feature is a pain to deal with then being a perk. The pages never end or break like notability. Especially when I need to export pdf’s or print one note notes. When I go print the pages as review to see physically the format is messed up. I hope one note fixes this issue. Also, split screen should apply to OneNote like notability and goodnotes. There should be rulers, or the straight lines or straight shapes feature. If one note has the same features as one note it surely will be the greatest note-taking app. The syncing is amazing though.

I’ve used OneNote for years. I love how it’s so easy to do so many different things, it’s perfect for organizing content for classes, record information about different topics in places that are easy to access, and it works well with the other applications (word, excel, PowerPoint and adding pdfs). One of the biggest reasons I use it every day is that I can access it from every device I have. There’s the OneNote app that I have on my phone and tablet, and then the program I have on my laptop. This is essential for me as a student since I like to be able to see my to-do list whenever I’d like, and to edit my list from any device. This has worked great for the entire time I’ve used OneNote until now.
Now my laptop is the only device that can sync my OneNote pages at a reasonable speed. This means that any time I want to make changes on my phone or tablet in the app, I have to wait anywhere from to 30 seconds -10 minutes for it to update the list with the most recent changes from my laptop, and then wait another 30 seconds -10 minutes for it to send the changes I just made back to my laptop. It’s awful. I’ve tried syncing on multiple different Wi-Fi’s, both with and without cellular data for my phone, and it is consistently so much worse than it used to be. Very frustrating.

OneNote is a great app for notetaking on iPads, whether via typing or handwriting with a compatible stylus. Both can be used together interchangeably to create a remarkably versatile workflow that syncs seamlessly across devices. It’s an extremely useful tool for college notes that I come back to often.

There is one issue with the app that frustrates the experience a bit, however, and that is the clunky mouse support. With other Office apps being able to take full advantage of the fast-highlighting features that iPadOS has brought to the table, being unable to quickly highlight and format text the same way in OneNote makes the experience more jarring. It takes a double-click to initiate highlighting mode on a word, as the pointer does little more than emulate a finger at this point; from there, the highlighting start and end bars have to be moved around, then formatting applied. It’s not a deal-breaking issue, but it can be an impedence to a note-taking workflow which makes it a bit harder to be swift and organized with color or other formatting compared to a PC.

Aside from this, the app functions incredibly smoothly, and is a great, free all-rounder notes option for all sorts of different applications.

I tried many other apps to track and manage all the minutiae I need for my varied life family work health ministry spiritual life and entrepreneurial issues. I tried others because they had just some advantage in one way. I would wish One Note could do this one more thing. Now One Note is everything I generally need in one place. The only thing more would be a mind mapping app type feature like Lucidchart. If Microsoft added that to One Note WOW it would totally rock. THE best part of One Note is that over many year and many devices and computers my notes have never been seamlessly picked up in the new device. The least stressful app I ever owned. Exact opposite actually, it makes me relax once I capture my thought in One Note. It is like extra raw memory power in my brain. It saved me from loosing a good detail idea for a particular client many times. I stress much less taking notes in One Note knowing I will always see them again no matter what happens to my device. Backups don’t work as well as that... l mean if you have 30 clients and you have quick note to make on the job and then over the phone then a photo to add or screenshot with weblink to a supplier or pdf One Note does it like nothing else can.

OneNote has helped me keep up with my college homework and notes. It allows me to do different things such as use the drawing tools to take handwritten notes, and also to type whenever it’s most convenient for me. Another big thing I like is that the canvas is infinite, and the app gives me templates such as different sized squared paper and lined paper. I can edit PDFs, add photos, add charts, etc. I can see my notes from all of my devices without a FEE! It’s completely free which is important to me. There are some downsides, however. I am taking math courses which would require me to have a ruler, and although the app on my laptop does have a ruler, my iPad doesn’t. Now, i can always switch to my laptop when I need to use it, but it would be more convenient for me to have it across all of my devices. There are a few things that could be changed to make the OneNote app more aesthetically pleasing, such as a better highlighter when using dark mode, because I can only see what I’ve written highlighted but cannot see the rectangle. Again, this isn't a big issue but a suggestion. Overall, I am very happy with using OneNote. It’s a MUST for college students!

So Many times have images not show up or show up extremely distorted across devices. Several of my professors prefer to post pdf files of their PowerPoint lectures instead of the PowerPoint itself. These lecture notes are extremely long sometimes 108 slides so I usually download them and use my laptop to insert the pdf files to onenote and then use my iPad to take notes. The converted PDFs sometimes show up extremely distorted on the iPad making it very difficult to annotate and take effective notes. Please fix this issue and make life easier for us college students. One more thing, when I insert a PDF file with several hundred pages and make notes next to it. When I want to print the notes out on a regular A4 paper. Onenote shrinks the pages so much that the hundred of PDF pages fit on only one single A4 paper making it completely unusable. I really really would appreciate having proper page layout options in the touch version of onenote to set strict borders to have specific page size like A4 so that both the inserted PDF pages and my notes next to them will both show up on the A4 paper and not shrink to extremely tiny size.

OneNote first off is wonderful. I’ve been using it for a long time for school and it is very good. With such good integration with Office and other apps there’s nothing else like it. The drawbacks of this app though are pretty severe. You cannot use 2 OneNote applications in split view, only one so you cant have a note open on one side and another on the other. This is such a productivity killer and needs to have that feature implemented; other Microsoft 365 apps have this for the iPad already. The next drawback is that ALL Microsoft 365 apps use iOS 12’s text edit touch tools as opposed to the new features implemented in iOS 13. You cannot hold the cursor down and drag it, instead, iOS 12’s touch controls bring up the ancient magnifying glass which is honestly a nightmare. Connected to this problem is at the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro almost has no support for text editing. It feels like I’m just using a finger as opposed to hovering over text with the “I” like on other documents. This is due to iOS 12’s touch controls that need to be updated. The current iOS used when writing this review is iOS 14. I cannot select individual letters without having to hold down left click and wait for the magnifying glass to come up. It is very annoying and Microsoft please fix.

Crashes all the time. Slow as a crawl when handling large notes, try undoing something! Cursor positioning is erratic. Search function is also erratic and clicking on the”next find” or “previous find” buttons often misbehaves, especially after some editing. Draw needs a lot of additional functionality: ability to erase parts of an object, ability to choose adequate erasers, ability to draw shapes without needing to use the primitive “ink to shape” facility, ability to fill an object with a color or pattern, interference between draw and text, inability to peg text to a specific place in the drawing canvas. Try for example something as simple as to draw a chessboard! Inability to create links to locations in the same note or in other notes. Missing menus and features when compared to PC or Mac versions. No recovery from data accidents, I lost notes more than once because of sync issues. Inability to store notes in the Apple iCloud. Poor integration with phone/tablet hand and pencil gestures. Inability to save drawings and text together to the same PDF. No diff feature. I could go on. And ah, an unresponsive development team, I have seen Internet traffic on some of these deficiencies dating from years ago.