Microsoft OneNote is the best note-taking solution in the world, and it’s available for free on every personal tech platform. You should use it. And here are a few tips for getting started.
Note: This post is inspired by Mike Elgin’s Computerworld post, Why you should start using Google Keep right away. I love Mike, and I understand why he recommends Google Keep. But I feel that OneNote is an even better solution. Plus it’s really free, and not “free for the price of your advertising-driven soul.”
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Get it for free. OneNote is free for every modern platform imaginable: the Windows desktop, Windows tablets, Windows phones, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, Android handsets and tablets, Android Wear, and on the web. No matter which platform choices you make, OneNote is there.
Instantly capture anything when you’re on the go with iPhone. On a 3D Touch-enabled iPhone, you can tap and hold on the OneNote icon and access OneNote features like New Note, New Photo, and New List, plus access notifications and recent notes. You can also access these features by adding the OneNote widget to your Today screen. And that New Photo option is perfect for scanning in a whiteboard or document too, just as with the separate Office Lens app.
Instantly capture anything when you’re on the go with Android. OneNote for Android let you add a OneNote badge to the home screen so you can take a note, clip, or photo anytime. Not a fan of Android badges? You can add a variety of OneNote widgets instead, including two full-featured widgets and separate icon-sized widgets for taking an audio note, starting a new note, and taking a picture.
Instantly capture anything from your browser. You can add the OneNote Clipper extension to your browser: It works with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge. So it works with Chromebook too.
Use it as a sketchpad. OneNote is the only note-taking solution to fully support digital ink capabilities, which can be used for handwritten notes with a pen, of course, and full transcription/search functionality, but also for sketching.
This is obviously just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting started with OneNote. What else should be on this list?
8741
<p>The problem with OneNote is that you need a Nano Science degree to figure out how to use it. Keep is "brain-dead" simple, and easy to use.</p>
5510
<p>OneNote is very good. However, the OneNote Clipper extension is far inferior to Evernote’s WebClipper. For example, Evernote’s WebClipper can clip more than one webpage at a time with a single click. OneNote can’t do that. If an article spans 4 pages, OneNote Clipper will only capture the first page. I switched to OneNote, ever since the Evernote Policy change, but then switched back to Evernote because it failed to me my personal needs. </p>
<p>All in all, I use OneNote for professional needs; Evernote for my personal needs; and Keep….</p>
<p>Keep has been really, really great for me. That’s because it’s so easily accessible on my phone, my personal computer, and even on desktop at work. It’s great for keeping little things like lists and little tidbits of information.</p>
<p>If you are an Google/Android user, Keep is a very indispensable tool because it’s lite and it’s very easy to get to. Evernote is great for me, when it comes to webclipping. Versus OneNote Evernote is superior in webclipping and user interface. As for OneNote, it’s my professional notebook…plain and simple. When I am not at work, I don’t ever ever ever want to see OneNote. LOL…I don’t need to see the stressful info, in my OneNote during afterhours, weekends, etc….</p>
4010
<p>Jealous of everyone who enjoys a flawless onenote experience. Syncing constantly flakes out for me within a week, and the Microsoft support solution when those ugly error codes creep in is create a new notebook and manually copy all your notes over. Once fine, twice hmmm, a third time – goodbye!</p>