Not only is their general tagging process better but the way that you can search and organize by tag is superior in both the desktop and mobile applications. I think Evernote’s conflict reconciliation process is superior to Microsoft’s.Įvernote has a superior tagging process as compared to OneNote. I was able to create, intentionally, note conflicts in OneNote. It uses Microsoft’s Sky Drive to hold notebooks, which is a good process, but the applications do not really seem to be that synchronization aware as-in they do not synchronize aggressively when changes occur. The entire synchronization process with OneNote needs to be rethought a little.
I never experienced this problem with Evernote. I have also had one experience where a note did not make it to the cloud when I closed OneNote down a little too quickly. So you are left with the choice of leaving it open all the time or waiting for to catch up when you first open the app. My desktop automatically syncs every 30 minutes in Evernote but OneNote only seems to sync when you open the application.
Whenever I make a change in any of my Evernote enabled devices, it seems that all my other devices have that update within moments. This will hurt their user adoption as people become more security conscious.Īnother area that needs substantial improvement in one note is its synchronization process. I do not understand how Microsoft can make such a major mistake in missing the encryption components of their mobile application. This is a key feature that I miss greatly. Evernote support’s encryption inside of a note on their mobile platforms. No encrypted notes, sections, are accessible via the mobile apps made by Microsoft. You can encrypt sections in OneNote, and all notes in that section will be encrypted on the desktop application. First off, Evernote’s mobile applications are vastly superior to Microsoft’s. OneNote has some drawbacks where Evernote has a very clear advantage.
This does reduce extraneous results that tend to cloud my searches. I find this feature to be very helpful as I lay out my notebooks and sections in a very organized manner and generally know roughly where the content is that I am looking for. You can restrict your searches down to notebooks, section groups, sections or pages. I really like how one note lays out its search process. I was never able to do this in Evernote as cleanly as I can in OneNote. I placed comments on PDFs of trail hikes where I wanted to remember information about our past hikes or stopping points. Yes, I can do this with Acrobat but the whole point is having all my notes and information in one place.
For example, I printed PDF files into OneNote and then use the text editor to overlay notes on top of the PDF pages. To my surprise, I found it to be very helpful. I will start playing with the equation editor in OneNote before much longer…īeing able to print directly into OneNote was a feature that I thought I would not use.
I treat OneNote like a light version of Microsoft Word as it has more text editing features as compared to Evernote but obviously less than the full version of Word. This allows me to put text anywhere in my note where I wish it. I also enjoyed the fact that OneNote’s Notes are essentially a series of independent text boxes. I was also able to copy and tables of various complexities from the web and other sources into one note without any need for reformatting. The ability to move content from Microsoft Word tables into one note was seamless. On the positive side, I found the text editing features of OneNote to be superior to Evernote.
Until then, I will be doomed to live the life of a typical software user who has to take the good with the bad. One of these days, a smart software developer is going to develop software, specifically the way I want to work. And this time I have come across several features of one note that I find are superior to Evernote and several items where Evernote clearly takes Microsoft out to the proverbial woodshed. I have been using OneNote diligently for the last week.