Let’s talk tools: OneNote, EverNote and back again…
Microsoft now has free, fully featured versions of OneNote for most all non-Linux platforms and a kickass web version. Pretty much a EverNote killer for me.
On converting back from EverNote, if you have access to a PC there is a great tool EverNote2OneNote (here) that both works and having been through the code in a debugger does the right thing. It had a bug that I caught, but I reported it and they fixed it already.
TL;DR {on my love of OneNote}
I used to work at a workplace that was a pretty hardcore windows only shop (it was at Microsoft in a group working on windows, so go figure). And while there I fell in love with OneNote.
Now it is a bit of a sad state of affairs if you admit to falling in love with software, especially corporate software, but OneNote was special. As close to a digital piece of paper as you could ever imagine, at the time there was nothing else quite like it out there. It was for taking notes, writing longer pieces, organizing projects, drawing , capturing quotes and pictures from websites, research, basically it was a digital notebook.
But, when I left I was faced with a big problem, there was no good integration with Mac or web for OneNote, it had gone into the purgatory of a product not scheduled to be removed, but not being updated either. I wanted platform independence and access to all my data everywhere. So, I moved to EverNote, a plucky competitor that was filling the need for a rich cross platform OneNote.
Fast forward to the last month, in an attempt to stay important Microsoft has taken a bunch of steps that seem to say: “even if you don’t want to use windows, use our services, please”. Among these they have basically started giving away OneNote everywhere for free. They have a Mac, a PC, an iOS and a revamped web version that rocks. They have even opened up an API, so you can get IFTTT and other service integration.
So, I am back using OneNote and loving it.
So, let us see how long my love of OneNote lasts this time.
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