OneNote vs Evernote

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By Melanie Pinola 25 March 2014

Now that Microsoft OneNote is free for Mac and Windows, the price and cross-platform barriers to this much beloved note-taking tool are gone. But how well does OneNote stack up to (the also awesome) Evernote, Lifehacker readers' favorite note-taking app? Let's take a look at where each app shines, and why you might want to use one over the other

Taking Notes: Two Very Different Approaches

OneNote Is the Better Digital Notebook
OneNote takes the "digital notebook" analogy to heart, organizing notes into colored tabbed sections within notebooks. Also like using a paper notebook, you can add text, images, tables, and more anywhere on the page?side by side if you want?and format them as easily as you can a Word document.

Evernote Is a Better Digital File Cabinet
Evernote, on the other hand, is more of a "digital file cabinet" (Evernote's slogan is, of course, "remember everything"). It has a simpler, starker user interface, and it's more conducive to making simpler notes than more styled ones.
Web Clipping and Third-Party Integration: Evernote Has a Clearer Head Start

Notes on the Go: Evernote Offers the Most Desktop-Like Experience
OneNote's mobile apps are what you would expect, if you expect a developer to think "People on mobile only need this, this, and this feature, so let's scrap the rest." Evernote's mobile apps are more like the developers thought "How can we tweak the app for a mobile interface?" The two perspectives make a big difference. Evernote retains much of the functionality of the desktop apps, while OneNote?still awesome as a note-taking and capturing tool, mind you?is more limited in mobile than it is on desktop

More OneNote Advantages
?OneNote is integrated into Windows. Hit Win+N and you can create a sticky note-like note instantly in OneNote. If you have a touchscreen Windows PC, OneNote lets you change the UI to make it more touch-friendly.
?OneNote works betters with the Microsoft Office ecosystem, of course. You can add reminders to text in your note via Outlook, share OneNote notes or notebooks on SharePoint with your company (paid version only), or embed Word, Excel, or Visio documents (and edit them in OneNote). In two clicks, you can add meeting details from Outlook to OneNote, which is probably why Lifehacker readers voted it the best meetings minutes service.P
?OneNote lets you tag parts of the page individually. If this were a OneNote note, for example, I could have tagged this bullet point "remember for later" while the bullet before I could have tagged "question."
?OneNote has rich collaboration features not available in Evernote, such as seeing revision authors and finding comments by author. Paid OneNote users (e.g., in the corporate environment) have many more note-sharing tools and notes revision histories features.P
?You can drag-and-drop files as embedded objects in OneNote. For example, if you drag a document to OneNote as you (even a Google Docs shortcut!), you can insert it as an attachment or embed it in full as a printout. In Evernote, a similar document can only be added as an attachment.P
?If you want to export your OneNote notes, you can do so in more formats: In addition to the proprietary OneNote format, you can export entire sections or pages at once into PDF, Word, or HTML. Evernote only lets you select notes to format into its own format or XML or HTML.
More Evernote Advantages
?You can add a reminder to an Evernote note. Although you can also add a reminder to a note in OneNote, you'd have to have Outlook installed in order to do so (and be willing to open Outlook every time you use OneNote). With Evernote, reminders are built-in.P
?Evernote's sharing options are much stronger. You can share a note via Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, as well as via email or URL.P
?You can encrypt (password-protect) selected text in any note. In OneNote, you can encrypt entire notebook sections, but that's only for the premium (paid) Microsoft Office versions. In Evernote, select text and right-click to encrypt it.
Which One Should You Use?
Choosing between Evernote and OneNote is like choosing between Evernote and Springpad: Both (or, really, all three) occupy the same app category space, but it might not be an either-or question.
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