I’ve been a user of Evernote for more than three years, but I’ve become fonder of OneNote lately. In case you don’t use either, both do a great job keeping notes organized without multiple Microsoft Word documents. Most Microsoft Word documents end up cluttering your hard drives and the content is hard to find, especially for notes.
If you haven’t started using either, start with OneNote instead of Evernote. If you are an Evernote user, take a look at these reasons that I think make it worthwhile to switch to OneNote, and decide for yourself which is right for you.
1. Price
OneNote is free and doesn’t limit features to only paying people.
2. Text Recognition in PDF Files
Evernote premium (paid) offers this, but it is included with OneNote. Searching in OneNote will search all notes, including the PDF text.
3. 15 GB of Storage Included
Evernote only offers 60 MB in the free plan. If you use Office 365, you can use a full TB. (Although, if your notebook exceeds 15 GB, you might be storing more than you should!)
4. Formatting
OneNote provides “Word-like” formatting. One of the most frustrating things about Evernote is the horrible formatting. If you want any formatting beyond the basics, you are out of luck. OneNote feels very similar to using Microsoft Word.
5. Audio Recordings Linked to Notes
If you record audio in a meeting and type notes, the audio is linked to where the note was taken. So, if you read a note that does not make sense, click the audio and you can hear what was said at that moment, making it much easier to get clarity on any note you missed. It is an extremely powerful feature for people who want to record meetings.
6. Video Annotations
You can embed the videos in your notes rather than just audio. So, at the PPAI Expo, you can take a recording at a booth and enter it directly into OneNote. Evernote only allows for photos and audio.
7. Stability
I don’t think Evernote will disappear, but I do think it is extremely challenged to make money, and thus I don’t know if its product will improve. It pretty much has been the same for the last three years.
For those of you who aren’t using either, some of my favorite uses for OneNote (or Evernote):
- Taking notes at trade shows
- Storing travel-related confirmations
- Clipping articles and blogs I might want to read again or read later
- Writing drafts of blogs
- Storing important emails
I am a big fan of the clipping tool in Google Chrome for my notes. I’ve been using the Evernote Web Clipper for so long that I have a great collection of all sorts of articles. OneNote Web Clipper’s article view gives you the functionality you need for clipping text from Web pages into OneNote.
Remember, OneNote is free and far more powerful, but it still has a learning curve. In fact, because it has so many more features, you might find Evernote easier since it works pretty well for basic notes.
If, however, you are finding yourself somewhat limited by Evernote, give OneNote a try. If you like it, Microsoft offers a tool to import all your old Evernote files. I used it—it took about an hour to convert almost 2,000 notes, and did a fine job.
