Wander:

I really want to like evernote because it has some features that one note does not, but I find the layout really unintuitive to use…

The layouts in the two tools are definitely different. The thing I like about the Evernote layout is that you can quickly sort and/or filter long lists of notes by different columns. With OneNote 2007, some of sections were getting cluttered with long list of page tabs. Hopefully I’ll be able to try ON2010 in a few months to see if it is any better in that respect.

-Carl

I am surprised that people have trouble with loading onenote, because I have the opposite problem. Onenote loads quickly on startup and evernote takes forever. I have trouble with clipping too, it’s very slow in evernote, I don’t know why. I like onenote for lists and compilations of info, such as info for a trip, etc. but I like evernote for storing whole webpages that I want to refer to later. I’m sort of using both right now trying to figure out which to use as the main note taking. I was lucky that I got onenote free with my work office suite.

I use different notebooks/folders (color coded) for different things like projects, software have v. desired and tracking keys and serial numbers, SAP transactions and source data attributes (and meanings), etc.

OneNote (two thumbs up) and MobilerNote on the iDevices!!

You may be interested in these two threads with a lot of comment about IS & Evernote, the first one on my blog and the second on another Kiwi blog:

http://mywitsend.co.nz/computer-stuff/software/725

http://jmacg.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/evernote-enters-my-life/

Alan Vallis
Whanganui

When I’m writing an article for instance, I’ll have loosely arranged potentially useful information in one of those ‘manila folder’ topics, and I will read through it all to remind myself of what I’m doing. With the structure you describe (with all my information in an Everything Else folder) I don’t think I’d be able to do that.

Sorry to ‘rabbit on’ about this (Aussie saying?!), but I’d be interested in your thoughts, if you have time.

Cheers,
Nick.

I’m sure there are differences in the ways that Evernote and Info Select operate. I have never used Info Select, so I can’t say for sure what you would be loosing. Since Evernote is free, my recommendation is to try it out for a while (without migrating any of your current IS data) and see if you like it.

-Carl

What I can’t seem to discover without actually using Evernote is whether it can match IS in this regard. What I’m asking, essentially, is whether, as in IS, you can ‘drop’ information into relevant folders that you can work with later, i.e. create a sort of loose structure that you can update and change constantly, but which instantly searchable a the same time. At least from the publicity, Evernote looks like a big grab-bag of ’stuff’, so that you can search and find anything, but perhaps without imposing your own structure on your information.

I’m hoping that’s a false impression, because in many ways Evernote looks really good. Can you tell me whether it ‘replaces’ Info Select, or do you lose some of Info Select’s strengths by going over to Evernote.

I’d be very interested, as well as grateful, for your thoughts.

Nick.

-Carl

Re. tags in Evernote, you mention that the user can “define rules for automatic tags”

This would be really useful for me, however I can’t see how to enable it in v3.5.

Any ideas? Thanks!

-Carl

-Carl

So if you want to share your notebook and have 4 or 5 people access it, you can all buy Evernote or use Hamachi 2.0 to link your computers to a central server.

Sorry for the slow response… If you have a question that is specific to OneNote itself, there are several places you can go for help. The first place is the Microsoft Community forum. There are also some blogs maintained by the OneNote development team, such as the ones here and here.

Hope that helps.

-Carl

For these reasons, I stopped using OneNote (after three years with it) and moved to Evernote. I need access when I’m away from a computer and Evernote is great.

1. Allows you to copy and select text
2. Full Handwriting and Image Text Finding
3. PDF Support (using either Adobe or Foxit iFilter
4. Free Syncroniztion of Handwriting and multiple databases (known as notebooks.

With these new features, Evernote is probably better now than OneNote.

-Carl

Good topic! I just wanted to say for those with learning disabilities or who are more visual I think OneNote is the best product. I have sever dyslexia so I spell words backwards most times, and how I spell it on one day may not be the same the next. So “tagging” in Evernote by using words is an almost useless method for me. It would mean I could have 3-4 tags for the same thing spelled differently, or that I have to run a Word document to spell check my tag, copy/paste into Evernote each time.

OneNote however is great for this, not only is the same
spellchecker features in Word on the screen already but the visual tags are fantastic. They mean I don’t have to use written words for tags, I can use the icons. I have made full use of this creating tags with icons for things like Map Directions (the Car Icon) travel plans (the plane icon), Make a Call (the cell phone icon), E-mail someone (the email icon) Goals reached (Smiley face icon) Goals not reached (Frown icon), Achivents (Ribbon Icon), Money item (Dollar sign) ect. So I just press on the icon that relates to my tags and I have it tagged avoiding my writing disability.

Its also great because I can visually see from the icons what types of things I need to get done today (which is good because I invert letters when I read as well). I’ve used it all through law school and am using it heavily in bar review right now and the visual tags make it very effective for me.

The only issue is searching tags, I can’t seem to find a away to just list all my “make a call” tags very easily. Oh, and I wish it had an Iphone App!

Anyway just thought I would add that to the discussion.

The capturing of data from desktop and firefox is handled beautifully. Sync from desktop to web to mobile – oh no!!! – no sync to windows mobile devices? What were they thinking, a notes app that doesnt sync to my HTC??

Offline access, please!!!!

I didn’t realize you were using the web version… The keyboard shortcuts only work in the PC client version. The Mac client probably has similar keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcut for a given command will be listed on the context menu when you right-click.

-Carl

Thanks so much! For some reason, I can’t get the keyboard shortcuts to work in any of my browsers (IE, FF, Chrome), but I don’t care. I hadn’t seen the “checkbox” item in the editor. Now that I know about it and know how to search on open “To Do” items, I am all set.

Brilliant!

Laura

Evernote does support To-Do items. You can insert one in a note by right clicking and selecting “Insert Checkbox” under the “To-Do” context menu. You can also use Alt-LeftClick with the mouse or CTRL-SHIFT-c on the keyboard to insert a to-do box. If you have a long list of To-Do items to enter, use CTRL-ENTER after the first one to move to the next line and start another To-Do item.

Once you have To-Do items scattered across your notes collection (or neatly organized within your notes collection), you can quickly find them all with a custom search. For example, you can create a “saved search” to find all incomplete (unchecked) To-Do items with the search criteria of “todo:false”.

OneNote does have the advantage of synchronizing To-Dos with Outlook Tasks, but as I mentioned in this post, the linkage can be a little unreliable.

Hope that helps.

-Carl

Thank you so much for this comparison and the ensuing discussion. I am very new to both products, and am trying to pick one. All of the points made have given me a lot to think about. Right now EverNote wins because I can access it on my Blackberry. But I LOVE the OneNote feature of being able to highlight some text, tag it as “To Do” and search on “To Do” items. (I don’t use Outlook) I would love the ability to highlight sections of text in EverNote and mark it as “To Do”. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Thanks!

Laura

-Carl

the other big lack from my standpoint is sharing. i was hoping to use EN to share forms, info, etc., with the staff at my primary care medical office in marin, but not giving everyone the same username and password (with the possibility of a disgruntled employee having the ability to wipe out everything) is a deal-breaker.

i may stick w/ EN free for a while, but if EN premium offered the above features, i’d upgrade in a minute. heck, even if they offered features “a la carte” i’d buy some.

one note sounds interesting, but i’m really averse to using micro$oft stuff if there’s a reasonable alternative . . .

One of the biggest issues right now for Evernote is that they no longer have Google Desktop Search working in Evernote 3.0. Having no desktop search capability is (almost) deal-breaker for me. OneNote is indexed by WDS, but none of the search apps can currently index EN3

-Carl

1. I’d need to purchase 2 One Note licences for my 3 PCs.

2. The desire for no hassle synchronizing between those 3 machines. With Evernote it’s a no-brainer.

3. Can use Evernote (online only) with Linux.

4. I can access my data from any online PC anywhere.

I’m so pleased with Evernote V3 that I paid for the full version. Now I can add my Word, Excel, etc documents and they’re automatically synched as well. Heaven!
My experience here.
There are some improvements I’d like to see, but this is new software. Give it a couple of years it’ll be another Google.

-Carl

Steve – This move is definitely causing a big stink on the Evernote forums. Although I like all of the online capabilities, I also prefer to pay once for my apps, and maybe once more for major upgrades (~5 year intervals). I really wish they’d consider an option to buy an “offline” version of the app with a one-time payment that disables the ads and re-enables the image indexing.

-Carl

Thanks for the comments… Yes, the linking features in Evernote were lost when they went to version 3. Internote linking, and linking into Evernote from external apps were both lost features. If you scan the Evernote forums you’ll find many posts where people are demanding to have these features returned, and many promises from the development team to deliver them in a future release. Hopefully that comes soon because it makes the app far less useful for me as well. You are also correct on the OneNote links. The onenote:// protocol is not widely recognized, especially by non-Microsoft apps. One awkward workaround is to copy the link, type WIN+R to open the Run dialog box, then paste the link.

The other disturbing thing is that Evernote recently disabled local image indexing (text recognition) in the Windows client. If you want your images indexed, you are stuck putting them up in the cloud via a network notebook. They also added advertisements in the free version. I guess I can understand why they had to do that, although it’s a bit obnoxious that they pitched the ads as an exciting new feature. They could have just explained that it’s a necessary part of their business model. Well, I guess the (free) honeymoon is over.

-Carl

I evaulated the newest evernote3 and outlook and don’t see a way to link to do intranotes or to link outside apps to a (deep link) note in EN. This is a deal breaker for me. Have I missed it.

On the ON side, it can link to any paragraph and has a right click “url of paragraph” that you can give to any app to get directly to the page. It is great BUT it does not play well with MS competetors. So using the onenote// protocal url from the web works fine in IE – it opens onenote and gets you to the exact paragraph, in Firefox however ( my browser) the same link only opens onenote but does not deep link you to the exact paragraph. This sucks because I use a FF tasks program that I need those links – outlook is way to slow and bloated for me. Also going the other way – using a gmail url which on the winxp desktop or in a browser address bar would deep link you to the exact gmail message does not work in ON – it only takes you to the inbox ( MS and Google fighting with each other!). This same link gives you the correct deep link in EN.

If there are folks who have figured out solutions to the two ON URL communication issues please let me know(dipaola@gmail.com).

Might move to EN if an update give you interlinking. But actually they worry me as they are going from successful free ( hey now we have enought subscribers – lets screw them now) to pushing that you have to register and by more on the cloud. Look at google notebook users – they are screwed with google pulling it. As evil as MS is – onenote is yours and won’t go away or change with a business model for annoyed investors.

-Carl

Since I am more or less chained to Outlook for mail, contacts, etc., OneNote is better integrated (from an overall GTD point of view), especially where creating/linking tasks, etc. in Outlook is concerned. However . . .

1) OneNote web clipping doesn’t work in Firefox. That nifty feature is only available in IE (yuck!) Evernote is better in this regard.

2) The mobile counterpart to OneNote – OneNote mobile – sucks. Mulitple notebook support is non-existent, and the interface is clumsy. Here again, Evernote is superior.

3) Accessibilty to your notes from a web browser, i.e. in situations when you are not at your own computer or do not have mobile device access, is also non-existent OneNote. Evernote, of course, isn’t limited on this regard, unless you deliberately choose not to sync a notebook to the web.

4) Some of the cool Evernote features that are available on the Mac client are not availabe on the Windows client.

In general, I think Evernote is the superior product, but if you are stuck on a Windows platform, Evernote’s Windows client needs some polishing and will require better integration with MS Office apps. In the end, I opted for OneNote. (sigh)

One your second question, import of Excel files is probably slightly easier in OneNote, but can be done in either. In both cases, you can copy a portion of the sheet and paste it as a table into a note.

It is very hard to move content into OneNote, other than printing to OneNote which results in a bit mapped (non-editable) version of the note. Evernote has made some nice improvements to their OneNote import function, and can also import from Google Notebook. Some of the formatting is changed, but the content comes across.

In the end, you’ll probably be curious enough that you’ll want to try both. I would recommend keeping your Excel setup alive while you test the two with new notes and a small portion of your archive.

Hope that helps!

Carl

but everyone seems to be switching to evernote hmmmm…

I have been an avid note taker my entire life. I have a lot of detailed info with complex relations. All of my notes have been taken in excel 2007, using many different worksheets for topics and columns for subtopics. I have been stubborn to leave excel but i think its about time. However I really like the ability to sort (largest to smallest, alphabetically) and filter columns in excel. Do either onenote or evernote have this capability?

Also I would really like to know about the importing/exporting capabilities of both if anyone has a moment?

2) Will it be easier to import my excel files into onenote than evernote? (seeing as they are both ms)

3) If I try one of the programs and think it is awful after a while can I export from one to another easier (ie. i think you mentioned that you had difficulty importing onenote notes into evernote? is it easier to import evernote into onenote? making evernote a better choice to start with?

tx jamie

One advantage that Evernote has is that the team turns versions and adds features much faster than Microsoft. For example, the web synchronization (40 MB/month free) and the PDF support are both major additions since my original blog post.

Hope that helps… and thanks for introducing the term “WhateverNote”

-Carl

Greetings and keep having fun with WhateverNote!

Sacha.

Thanks for your detailed comments! I’ve been using Evernote 3 for the past few months. There are still a few things I’d like to see added, but many of the shortcomings I noted above are now addressed. If I make it to six months, maybe I’ll put my copy of OneNote on eBay

BTW, if you’d like to help kill “the tape”, you can contribute to this post on the Evernote forums.

-Carl

BUT…about a month ago, I dl’d EN Beta 3.x & am really loving it, eventhough I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do. One neato thing is that I have a Livescribe pen. When I take some really important notes with the LS pen, I’m then able to add the audio to Evernote, along with a visual of the page, if I like.

I would have to say, in my short time with being “committed” (STS) to EN, I’ve mostly been adding notes. The true test, of course, will most likely be many months from now, when I have the need to actually FIND something quickly! LOL!

Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System
Setting up OneNote 2007 for GTD
DROE Tool (Downloads page)
Handwriting Recognition in OneNote 2007? Well, kinda…
OneNote and Outlook Task Synchronization

-Carl

I have used this functionality to great effect while doing field research. While other researchers struggle with endless hours of field recordings, I have instant access to any section of audio I want–searchable by keywords I added while listening. In fact, all of my MA research was done in OneNote, making things very easy to move over to Word.

I am totally sick of Microsoft and will soon be switching to a Mac. Unfortunately, this brilliant program will force me to put a copy of XP on my new MBP. I wish something else matched its functionality and searchability.

So at present I can only create a link to the directory and then find the file in it which rather deflates its effectiveness. Or else I just link to online pdfs where they occur and keep downloads as backups.

However there is far better workaround – set up a local webserver and set up a http localost url to the document directory. I’ve just done that with an apache webserver and it works fine!

That’s probably a better solution all around if you are linking to a collection of documents since it means the document urls don’t depend on their absolute location on the hard drive and the links so can be used on a copy of the document directory on any machine and operating system with a local webserver

Mark – I agree… Each person will put a different priority/value on those rows above. Depending on what’s important to you, you could draw a different conclusion. With PDF support, and with Google Desktop Search support (even more important for me), I may be switching back. I have the EverNote 3 beta installed and am playing with it now.

I chose evernote. The price is great, and as noted, now has pdf support.

See http://blog.evernote.com/2008/05/11/evernote-for-mac-just-got-better/

-Carl

My script simply took PDFs, converted them page by page into JPG format using GhostScript, then auto-imported them into EverNote. I will try to find it and get it posted shortly (in the next week or so).

-Carl

Philippe

Philippe

-Carl

theBrain comes free with the Personal version and has a good full feature set. I like the inter-connectivity of notes and ideas. The main downside is it does not index and search content that is linked to the file system such as other documents or folders.

I’ve seen in the EverNote forum some users are talking about how it would work well to integrate with the Brain. I mentioned this to the folks at theBrain but have not heard back.

One plus to EverNote, by the way, is that is can be run on other operating systems.

Sometimes OneNote isn’t set up to search images by default. Try right clicking on the picture/image in OneNote, then select “Make Text in Image Searchable”, then from the sub-menu select the language. As a quick test, I pasted a screen shot of your comments above and was able to search and hit all the words I searched on.

If that doesn’t work, you might be able to get more in depth technical help (or at least report a bug) on the Microsoft OneNote forum. Here is the link.

-Carl