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What’s the king of the note-taking apps?
There are two main contenders for the crown: Microsoft’s OneNote and the impartial Evernote. Launched in 2003, OneNote was added to the Microsoft Workplace suite (most variations of which at the moment are known as Microsoft 365) in 2007. OneNote is now additionally bundled with Home windows 10 and 11 and supplied at no cost as a standalone product.
Evernote launched in 2008 and has loved steadily rising consumer numbers since then; the corporate says it has 225 million customers worldwide. (Microsoft hasn’t launched consumer numbers for OneNote, however between Microsoft 365 and Home windows 10 and 11, greater than a billion customers possible have a model of it put in on their machines.)
OneNote and Evernote can be found for all the most important desktop and cell OSes, they’ll every sync your notes to your entire gadgets and the online, and each promise to be the one note-taking app you want. However additionally they have some very distinct variations. So which is best for enterprise customers?
I’m a longtime consumer of each purposes, so I’ve taken a take a look at the newest model of every for Home windows, macOS, iPad, iPhone, and Android. This isn’t a deep-dive assessment, however slightly a private take a look at what I like and don’t very similar to about every — and the details of distinction between the 2. I spend extra time on the Home windows model of every, however I’ll observe similarities and variations in different variations as nicely.
Observe that after a number of years of Microsoft complicated everybody by having three completely different variations of OneNote, there may be now just one model that the corporate will proceed to replace, known as OneNote for Home windows. (OneNote for Home windows 10 is not being distributed, and it’ll attain finish of assist in October 2025.) This assessment relies on OneNote for Home windows.
OneNote: A good way to get organized
OneNote could be very a lot a full-blown software. It helps you to create easy or advanced notes from scratch, set up them into searchable, browsable notebooks, and sync them amongst quite a lot of platforms, together with Home windows PCs, Macs, iPads and iPhones, Android gadgets, and the online.
It bristles with note-creation instruments for drawing, recording audio and video, scanning photographs, embedding spreadsheets, and reviewing the edits of others (though the talents of these instruments differ considerably relying on the platform). The truth is, its note-creation instruments are extra complete than Evernote’s.
The organization-minded will respect OneNote’s primary construction. You create particular person notebooks; inside every pocket book, you possibly can create part teams that include a number of sections. Every part has particular person pages, with every web page a separate observe. It’s excellent for organizing content material with a logical construction.
For instance, in the event you’re utilizing OneNote to maintain monitor of notes about your gross sales employees, you can have a Gross sales Workers pocket book, then part teams for every salesperson, and inside every of these part teams there is perhaps sections for every of their clients. Inside every of these buyer sections, you can have particular person pages, with notes concerning the salesperson’s relationship with them, and embody hyperlinks to gross sales figures.
OneNote is progressively changing into extra built-in with the remainder of the Microsoft 365 suite. For enterprises, stay collaboration is particularly essential, and it really works precisely the way in which it does in different Microsoft 365 apps, so there ought to be no studying curve. (To get began, click on the Share button on the higher proper of the display regardless of the place you might be in OneNote.)
Making OneNote much more highly effective for companies is that it integrates fairly nicely with Microsoft Groups. You possibly can add a OneNote pocket book to Groups, and everybody in the identical Groups channel can view it and make edits to it, so long as they’re granted entry.
Internet clipping
Nearly as good as OneNote is at creating notes, it falls in need of Evernote’s appreciable capabilities for clipping content material from the online. OneNote provides a browser add-on for Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Firefox known as the OneNote Internet Clipper. Observe that it is advisable to sign up to the extension with a Microsoft account to make use of it.
The OneNote Internet Clipper interface is mostly the identical in all browsers. While you’re on an online web page from which you need to clip content material, click on the Clip to OneNote icon within the browser’s toolbar and select to clip the complete web page, a bit of the web page (click on and drag to pick out it), or simply the article. You too can save the web page as a bookmark. When you determine the form of clip you need, it can save you it on to any OneNote pocket book.
Sadly, clipping is a combined bag. As an example, clipping an article generally doesn’t seize that article. As a substitute, you get a headline, subhead, and a hyperlink. It’s not far more than glorified bookmark. And if the positioning takes that web page down, it’s misplaced to you.
The net clipper continuously does an excellent job with full-page clips, capturing the entire web page, together with all of the scrollable parts of it which you can’t see. However it may be temperamental and flaky. In some cases, it might’t seize full pages and as an alternative shows an error message that reads, “Sorry, the sort of web page can’t be clipped.” When it does handle to seize a whole web page, it generally overlays content material with different content material, making the web page troublesome to learn. At instances it appears to disregard the HTML instructions on a web page and shows a protracted scrollable web page with little rhyme or motive to it. And for heavy pages, equivalent to these with video on them, you’ll have to attend a number of seconds for the complete preview to load earlier than you possibly can click on the Clip button.
Sarcastically, I most continuously got here throughout these issues on Microsoft-created net pages, together with one within the Microsoft Retailer that describes the clipper and makes it out there for obtain, and one other that describes OneNote’s new options.
What’s extra, in the event you seize the complete web page or a area of a web page, the clip is saved as a graphic picture solely, in order that any hyperlinks or multimedia components on the web page don’t work. You possibly can add your personal textual content above and under that picture, however you possibly can’t edit the content material proven within the picture.
Along with net clipping, OneNote has a device that permits you to seize something in your display. To do it, right-click the OneNote icon within the system tray, choose Take display clipping, then draw a rectangle across the space of the display you need to clip. You possibly can then reserve it to any OneNote pocket book. It’s captured as a picture solely.
The variations amongst variations
It’s in Home windows the place OneNote actually shines. That’s the place it has its full complement of note-creation instruments. It’s additionally the place its heritage as an Workplace software is clearest, as a result of it makes use of the Workplace Ribbon as a approach to offer you entry to all of its options.
OneNote for Home windows has eight Ribbon tabs — File, Residence, Insert, Draw, Historical past, Assessment, View, and Assist — every of which supplies you entry to loads of options. (To save lots of display area, you possibly can press Ctrl-F1 to make the Ribbon instructions beneath the tabs disappear or reappear later.) The File tab helps you to open, print, share and export recordsdata; change settings; and extra. The Residence tab helps you to format textual content, add tags, mark gadgets as essential and extra. The Insert tab provides instruments for inserting objects into your notes, together with spreadsheets, footage, audio and video you possibly can document, equations, and symbols.
The Draw tab has the same old drawing instruments, whereas Historical past reveals you older variations of a web page, your edits, different customers’ latest edits, and so forth. Assessment consists of acquainted Workplace options together with a spell checker, a thesaurus, and a translation device. View has loads of methods to vary the looks of your notebooks and their pages, equivalent to including strains, altering their measurement, altering the colours and so forth, and Assist helps you to seek for assist info, contact tech assist, and provides suggestions to Microsoft. Evernote has nothing approaching this array of subtle instruments.
Every web page you create is a clean slate that permits you to add textual content, photographs, media, and objects in a freeform means, transferring them round and formatting them with ease. For many who need to spend the time, it might imply creating extraordinarily wealthy pages. But when all you need is textual content, that’s easy to do as nicely.
The iPad and Mac variations have the identical primary look, really feel and group because the Home windows model, though with fewer options. (The Mac model has extra capabilities than does the iPad model.) They’ve solely 4 tabs throughout the highest: Residence, Insert, Draw, and View.
In some cases, the tabs are as absolutely featured as within the Home windows model — the Mac’s Residence tab, for instance, consists of all the formatting and different capabilities of the Home windows model. (The iPad doesn’t have as many capabilities.) Different tabs have fewer options — notably the Insert tab. There, the Mac and iPad variations help you insert quite a few primary gadgets equivalent to tables, footage, recordsdata, hyperlinks, PDFs, equations, and the date and time. You too can document audio and take screenshots (on the Mac) or photographs (with the iPad’s digicam) and insert these. However you possibly can’t insert spreadsheets or on-line movies, or document video as you possibly can with the Home windows model.
The net model of OneNote options the tabbed design because the Home windows, Mac, and iPad variations, with the identical primary function set because the Mac and iPad variations. It additionally helps you to open a web page or pocket book within the consumer model of OneNote on the machine on which you’re working, if the machine has OneNote put in.
The Android pill model appears to be like and works very similar to the iPad model, with Residence, Insert, Draw, and View tabs, though it’s not as absolutely featured. For instance, the Insert tab solely helps you to insert footage, audio, recordsdata, to-do gadgets, tags, and hyperlinks.
The interface for iPhones is way less complicated than on PCs or tablets. You see your part teams in a scrollable checklist, and might then navigate simply down into particular person sections and pages. It doesn’t have tabs, given the restricted display actual property on telephones, and it’s constructed primarily for quick-and-dirty observe taking or checking your current notes.
AI on the way in which
Microsoft will in some unspecified time in the future ship AI options into OneNote that would drastically enhance the way it works. Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is powered by Microsoft’s generative AI chatbot, can be built-in into OneNote, in line with a weblog submit by OneNote product supervisor Greg Mace. Copilot inside OneNote will be capable of “draft plans, generate concepts, create lists, set up info, and… rework current textual content by summarizing, rewriting, formatting, and including visible context,” wrote Mace.
For instance, listed here are two particular duties that Mace says Copilot will be capable of do:
- Summarize notes into bullet factors on a brand new web page.
- Generate an inventory of subjects and speaking factors to be coated in an annual investor replace assembly.
After all, these are solely guarantees. We don’t know in the event that they’ll work in observe. And there’s no date for when Copilot can be built-in into OneNote. When it occurs, although, we’ll let you understand.
Storage and pricing
OneNote syncs its content material amongst your entire gadgets and to the online through Microsoft OneDrive or SharePoint. It comes with the subscription variations of Workplace (Microsoft 365 or Workplace 365) however isn’t included within the non-subscription variations. When you obtain the OneNote app however don’t use Microsoft 365/Workplace 365, you rise up to 5GB of cloud cupboard space for the whole lot together with your OneNote content material, though you should buy further cupboard space.
When you or your group pays for an Workplace 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription, you get far more storage — 100GB as much as 6TB, relying on the plan you purchase. Companies get 1TB or limitless storage per consumer, relying on the plan. (See OneDrive and Microsoft 365 plans for private and enterprise use.)
Evernote: The very best web-clipping device you will discover
Evernote is a very completely different beast than OneNote. Though it provides the identical primary performance — the flexibility to create, set up, and sync notes amongst a number of platforms, together with Home windows PCs, Macs, iPads and iPhones, Home windows Telephones, Android gadgets, and the online — it sports activities a way more colourful and welcoming interface. And it completely excels at clipping and saving content material from the online.
When you haven’t used or up to date Evernote for a while, you’ll be shocked by the brand new residence display interface, which bristles with widgets for fast entry to notes, notebooks, not too long ago captured photographs, and extra. On the one hand, it offers you a number of methods to view and create notebooks and notes. On the opposite, it may be somewhat bit overwhelming. However you possibly can at all times discover what you need by utilizing the search field on the higher left of the display or clicking or tapping the pocket book icon to see your notebooks listed. You possibly can add or take away widgets on your own home display to make it look and work precisely the way in which you need.
The left-hand aspect of the display is used for navigation; click on or faucet Notebooks to see checklist of your entire notebooks, after which click on or faucet every particular person pocket book to see all of its notes in a scrollable checklist. When you want, you possibly can faucet or click on Notes within the left-hand navigation to see your entire notes chronologically in a scrollable checklist, whatever the pocket book by which they’re situated. For simple looking out, you possibly can add tags to every observe while you write it or seize it; the principle navigation additionally helps you to view your notes by tags.
I discover Evernote to be extra visually compelling than OneNote. The show is especially engaging while you scroll by way of a pocket book, with the checklist of notes within the pocket book exhibiting small graphics pulled from every observe.
Evernote doesn’t have practically as many note-creation instruments as OneNote. There are the same old textual content formatting instruments, and you may embed tables, recordsdata, and footage in your notes; use digital “ink” on them when you have a contact machine with a pen; and document audio and video as a part of your notes. You too can join it to Google Calendar so that you simply’ll be capable of see your schedule and conferences from inside Evernote, create notes based mostly on these conferences, and extra. (As I write this, Evernote is engaged on an identical integration for Outlook.) You too can connect with Google Drive and embed recordsdata from there into your notes as nicely. It’s an inexpensive choice however doesn’t embody OneNote’s superior options, equivalent to reviewing the edits of others.
Internet clipping
The place Evernote actually shines is in capturing content material from the online, organizing that content material, and making it straightforward so that you can discover it and use it.
Its web-clipping device is exemplary. The device runs as a browser add-on for Chrome, Firefox, Web Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and Opera; the precise options differ considerably from browser to browser. Normally, I’ve discovered it to be probably the most strong in Chrome and Edge, capable of deal with even probably the most advanced net pages.
With most browsers, while you’re on a web page from which you need to seize content material, click on the Evernote icon within the toolbar and the clipper seems on the right-hand aspect with quite a lot of choices, together with:
- capturing simply the article itself, eliminating advertisements and different pointless materials
- capturing a “simplified article” — simply textual content and graphics with out the unique structure or movies
- capturing the complete web page as you see it
- capturing solely a bookmark to the web page
- capturing a screenshot of the web page
While you clip one thing from the online, it’s also possible to add tags and notes. And you’ll select which pocket book you need to add the content material to or create a brand new pocket book on the fly. As well as, the clipper has markup instruments while you seize screenshots, as a way to annotate what you’re capturing by including textual content, highlighting, arrows, drawing on it, and so forth. In your browser after you save a clip, you’ll see a Share button that permits you to share the observe with colleagues or share a hyperlink to the unique supply through electronic mail or social media.
When you’ve captured the content material, you are able to do extra with it. While you open the observe in Evernote, the textual content is stay — you possibly can copy it, paste to it, edit it, change the formatting, and so forth. The hyperlinks are stay as nicely, as a way to click on any hyperlink and have it open in your browser. Any multimedia on the web page, equivalent to video, isn’t stay, although — click on it and also you’re despatched to the unique web page you captured.
The variations amongst variations
Evernote sports activities an identical feel and appear throughout its Home windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, and net apps. They function the identical widgets and structure on the house display, and related left-hand navigation. You’ll haven’t any downside in any respect switching among the many variations.
The iPad model’s residence web page bristles with widgets for fast entry to notes, notebooks, not too long ago captured photographs and extra, and could be a little bit overwhelming. However you possibly can at all times discover what you need by looking out; faucet the search icon within the left margin and the search field seems on the higher left of the display. And as with the opposite variations, you possibly can faucet the pocket book icon to reveals your notebooks listed alphabetically, after which flick through them.
On the iPhone, Evernote isn’t as advanced and crowded-looking as on the iPad. It appears to be like and works like a extra streamlined model of its Home windows, Mac, and net variations. Faucet the three-line menu button on the backside left of the display to show navigation, faucet the New button to create a brand new observe, and faucet the Search button for Evernote’s well-done search capabilities.
Storage and pricing
The essential model of Evernote is free, nevertheless it limits you to including 60MB of recent notes a month, helps you to sync between solely two gadgets, and doesn’t embody superior options. There are additionally Private and Skilled subscriptions out there, which have differing options equivalent to whether or not you possibly can flip notes into displays; search inside PDFs and attachments; and combine with different software program and providers equivalent to Slack and Microsoft Groups. Private, meant for people, prices $80 a 12 months and allows you to add 10GB monthly. Skilled, additionally for people, prices $110 a 12 months and consists of 20GB of uploads monthly.
Evernote Groups is designed for enterprise collaboration, providing shared workspaces, a coaching program, and centralized administration instruments. It prices $150 per consumer per 12 months and provides 20GB month-to-month uploads plus 2GB per consumer.
Backside line
Though Evernote and OneNote are each note-taking instruments, they’ve very completely different emphases and can be utilized for fairly completely different functions.
When you’re primarily searching for a device that permits you to simply seize, set up, and discover content material from the online, you’ll need Evernote, as a result of its instruments for doing which can be exemplary. When you as an alternative need to create notes from scratch and have them in well-organized notebooks, or in the event you’re a heavy Microsoft 365 consumer, OneNote is the way in which to go.
Then once more, you could be like me. I’ve been utilizing each of them for years. OneNote is my go-to device for organizing and taking notes for initiatives equivalent to books and articles. I take advantage of Evernote for analysis. Provided that they’re each free (a minimum of for the essential model of Evernote), it offers me the perfect of each worlds.
This text was initially printed in March 2014 and most not too long ago up to date in Might 2023.
Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.
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