Compatibility and Pricing
OneNote and Evernote are both available as free downloads for iOS, Android, Mac, PC and Windows phone devices. Evernote also offers a BlackBerry app.
Both Evernote and OneNote store your notes in the cloud and sync to it based on changes you make from your account on any device. Both offer premium versions of their service that support offline storage of notes.
Evernote has a freemium business model — the basic plan is free but with restrictions: only two devices, plus online (web) access to notes. Evernote Plus is $4/month or $35/year and adds the following features:
- Unlimited number of devices to add and access notes
- Offline access so you don't need an always-on Internet connection to take or view notes
- forward emails — including attachments — into Evernote to keep them alongside related notes
- 1 GB of upload space each month
- Customer support via email
Evernote Premium is $8/month or $70/year and adds the following features:
Spaces, in Evernote Business, is the simplest way for you and your teams to focus, share, and achieve more together. By creating a new space for each project, topic, or workgroup, your team can: Quickly view, share, and edit a collection of related notes and notebooks in one place. V10 Training: Free Checklist vs Checkbox feature (This is representative of the training style that you’ll find inside Harmon Enterprises paid programs) Paid The Academy: An Evernote Training Membership – The Academy is the absolute fastest and most comprehensive way to get the Evernote skills, workflows, and expert coaching you need to transform your life with Evernote. I personally feel like the free version will do just fine, as I’ve found 60MB of space to be pretty adequate for notes. But Evernote’s changing prices are one reason The Verge’s Casey Newton. Evernote storage is a metaphor, with notes inside notebooks. Well, notebooks can also be grouped together, inside 'stacks.' For example, you could make a stack called Travel and then put multiple. To invite members to a space, click the Invitebutton at the top of the space, then enter the names or email addresses of those you’d like to invite. If you already have content to put in a space, create a space then import the content into it by clicking the menu button (three horizontal dots).
- Revision history for notes
- Search Microsoft Office documents to find the text you are looking for.
- Annotate PDFs.
- Scan business cards to autmatically create phone contacts
- Premium includes 10 GB of monthly upload space
- Customer support via live chat
OneNote is free to use, with no restrictions other than that your notes will be stored on Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service. So you are not paying for OneNote but may have to pay for OneDrive's cloud storage. OneDrive is a freemium product with 5GB storage free, 50GB for $2/month. Paying Office 365 users get 1TB per user for $7/month (personal use), 1TB per user for 5 users (family plan), or 1TB per user for enterprise customers.
Paying users of OneNote 2016 can choose to store their notes outside of OneDrive. Unlike Evernote, the free version of OneNote does not have ads.
Features
A “note” may refers to any text, voice, video, picture, webpage, webpage excerpt, or even a handwritten note that can be stored, shared, collaborated and dispersed (to other Evernote or OneNote users) using these programs.
Common Features
Both, Evernote and Onenote have the following features in common, although they are structured differently for each app:
- Handwriting recognition
- Tag support (although this is significantly stronger in Evernote)
- Notebook organization
This 11-minute video compares the features of these two note-taking apps for smartphones:
Exclusive Features
In addition to the standard features above, each app has unique features as listed below:
Evernote:
- One can scan receipts directly to Evernote.
- Can convert handwriting to text.
- Skitch lets you use annotation, shapes and sketches.
- Evernote’s Penultimate for iPad offers handwriting recognition and saving hand-written notes. OneNote offers handwriting recognition on desktop apps but not on tablets.
- Web Clipper lets you save anything you see online into your Evernote account.
- Evernote Hello lets you scan business cards, combine information about people and meetings through Calendar, etc.
- Evernote Food gives you one place to discover, collect, and remember your life’s memorable moments in food.
- Evernote Clearly makes blog posts, articles and webpages clean and easy to read.
- Evernote Peek lets you turn your notes, audio and image in Evernote into study materials, using iPad’s smartcover, or its own virtual smartcover.
- Allows voice memos.
- Can add images to Notes.
- Location Tagging.
- Voice recognition – Evernote offers speech to text feature.
- One can add audio notes, webcam stills, or .mp4 videos to notes.
To further optimize your experience with Evernote, read these 10 tips offered by PC World.
OneNote:
- OneNote can add audio and video recordings to notes, play back and share the recordings too.
- Can add rich media, screen clips, Excel files, images, etc. using the Windows-only desktop software.
- Provides richer text formatting than Evernote.
- Allows voice memos.
- Can add images to Notes.
The OneNote user interface is like a notebook, with the ability to add notes anywhere on the page and the organizational hierarchy of notes into section groups, sections and pages. Evernote has stronger support for tags or organize notes. While OneNote also supports tags, this feature is not yet well-developed for user-defined tags.
Pocketnow has come up with 8 ways in which MS OneNote is better.
Syncing
Evernote on the Web is constantly updating all of your computers and devices with the latest versions of your notes, so you'll always have the right information, wherever you are. All of the Evernote applications are in regular contact with Evernote on the Web. Whenever a new note is created or edited on any of your Evernote-capable devices, the note is uploaded to the Evernote on the web where all of your other devices will download it the next time they sync.Evernote for Windows or Mac automatically synchronizes your notes with Evernote on the Web every few minutes, but you can manually sync any time by clicking the 'Sync' button.
OneNote mobile (free) allows upto 500 notes to be synced between SkyDrive and your device, after which one cannot edit notes without upgrading. Syncing happens automatically when a user moves between notes or sections, or can be done manually by click on “sync”.
Storage Limits
- Evernote can have up to 100,000 notes with size limit of 25mb per note for Free users, and 100mb per note for Premium users.
- 250 synchronized Notebooks.
- 10,000 Tags.
- 100 saved Searches.
- 60mb per month upload limit for Free users.
OneNote has no upload limits.
Sharing
Evernote allows users to selectively share Notebooks with other individuals, as well as let other selected Evernote users to edit selected folders.
OneNote has a complex sharing setup using SharePoint or SkyDrive Pro, where user access can be controlled through Active Directory and Group Policy.
Encryption
Evernote allows password-protected encryption of individual notes, but not entire Notebooks.
SkyDrive SSL uses encryption while transmitting files, but does not encrypt files at rest. Microsoft encourages business users to use SharePoint instead. Office 2010 format documents use heavy duty AES encryption.
Security breach
On March 2, 2013, Evernote revealed that hackers had gained access to their network and been able to access user information, including usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords. All users were asked to reset their passwords.
Recent News
References
If you’ve been looking for a tool to help manage your digital life, you’ve probably come across Evernote. This note-taking app has been around since 2004. Since then, it has become one of the most popular productivity tools on the market.
Evernote is pretty straightforward to use. But the app doesn’t always do a great job of demonstrating how to use its most useful features. That’s why we’ve put together this Evernote tutorial for beginners. We’ve covered many of the most commonly used features, as well as some hints and tips to get even more out of Evernote.
First, let’s get Evernote installed.
How to Install Evernote
Installing Evernote on mobile or desktop is simple.
To install Evernote’s desktop client, first visit Evernote’s download page. The download should begin automatically. If it doesn’t, click the link to download the installer. You’ll need to agree to the License Agreement to continue.
If you’re on a Mac, simply drag the Evernote app icon from the disk image to your Applications folder. If you’re using Windows, double-click the Evernote executable and follow the prompts.
Installing Evernote on mobile is even easier. Simply navigate to the Evernote app in either the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store, depending on the kind of device you’re using. Then, allow your device to install the app. If you’re a Windows Phone user, grab Evernote from the Microsoft Store.
Once you’ve installed the app, you’ll need an Evernote account before you can start using it. This is necessary because Evernote can sync across multiple devices and operating systems. Saved items are synced to your Evernote account, not your device.
Once you’ve installed Evernote and created your account, you’re ready to go. You can also log into the Evernote web app in your browser now, too.
How to Install the Evernote Web Clipper
While you’re getting set up, it’s worth installing the Evernote Web Clipper. This handy browser extension allows you to “clip” almost any item you find online: blog posts, videos, social media posts, even entire web pages, and sync them with your primary Evernote account.
If you’re a Google Chrome user, navigate to the Evernote Web Clipper page in the Chrome Web Store. Then, simply click “Add to Chrome” to install the extension:
The process is very similar for Mozilla Firefox. First, head to the Evernote Web Clipper page in the Firefox Add-Ons library. Then click “Add to Firefox” to install the extension:
Fortunately, using the Evernote Web Clipper is almost as easy as installing it.
Once you’ve installed the Web Clipper in either Chrome or Firefox, you’ll notice an elephant icon in the space to the right of your browser’s address bar. When you want to clip something, click on that elephant icon to open the Web Clipper.
Before the Web Clipper can save anything, you need to tell it what it should clip. The Web Clipper defaults to the “Article” setting. As you can see in the screenshot below, you can select other clipping options, depending on how much of the source material you want to save.
For example, the “Simplified articles” option clips all the text on a page but doesn’t preserve the page’s formatting or typefaces. The “Full page” option clips the entire page, including images and ads. You can also save pages as bookmarks or take a screenshot.
You can also create new Notebooks directly from within the Web Clipper. This handy feature means you don’t have to log into the web app or launch the Evernote app to create a new Notebook, then go back to the Clipper to save the item—you can do it all at the same time. It’s also possible to add tags and comments to clipped items as you clip them, which helps keep things organized.
Now that you’ve installed Evernote and the Web Clipper, let’s dive in and see what Evernote can do.
Creating Your First Note in Evernote
As a note-taking app, Evernote’s primary function is to help you take notes quickly. To do this, Evernote relies on an organizational system based on real-world, pen-and-paper notebooks. Notes are stored inside Notebooks, and Notebooks can be organized into Notebook Stacks.
There are a few different ways of taking notes in Evernote. To create a new Note on desktop, simply click the “New Note” button in the upper-left of the screen. You can also use familiar keyboard shortcut to create new Notes. Use ⌘ + “n” to create new Notes on OS X, and Ctrl + “n” to create new Notes on Windows. You can also use ⌘ + Shift + “n” (or Ctrl + Shift + “n” on Windows) to quickly create new Notebooks.
One of the biggest drawbacks with Evernote’s note-taking functionality is that Evernote doesn’t categorize or name new Notes automatically. As you can see in the screenshot above, I created three new Notes using Evernote’s keyboard shortcuts—but Evernote doesn’t know what to do with them. It just leaves them as Untitled Notes and doesn’t categorize them at all. This can get out of hand quickly, so bear this in mind if you’re a prolific note-taker.
Fortunately, creating new notes is a lot more intuitive on mobile. Simply open the Evernote app and click the central green “+” button to create a new Note:
Once you click the green “+” icon to create a new Note, you’ll be presented with a familiar composition interface. You can choose from one of Evernote’s Templates or simply start typing. Note that if you want to use Evernote’s Templates on desktop, your system will open the Template Gallery in a separate browser window.
If you minimize the virtual keyboard, you’ll notice a series of icons running along the bottom of the app’s UI. These are Evernote’s advanced note-taking tools.
The camera icon does exactly what you’d expect it to do. Tapping this icon gives Evernote access to your mobile device’s camera, allowing you to take pictures and save them as Notes. Need to preserve a schematic diagram your colleague sketched out on a whiteboard? Create a new Note, take a picture, then save it.
Similarly, the microphone icon to the right of the camera icon allows Evernote to access your device’s microphone. Doing so means that you can save audio files as Notes. This can be a great time-saver for instances when you’ve got a great idea but don’t have time to write it down.
Next up is the handwriting icon. This function allows you to create handwritten notes directly within Evernote, annotate images, and more. Simply choose your input mode, select a brush size and color, then start writing. There can be a little variance in line weight, depending on the angle of your stroke, but it’s generally pretty accurate.
Finally, the paper-clip icon allows you to attach files to Notes and Notebooks. This is a really handy feature for organizing documents associated with specific Notes in one place. For example, you could create a new Note reminding yourself to check in with a company’s accounting department about the status of an invoice. You could then attach a copy of your company’s most recent invoice so you have everything you need when you’re ready to follow up on that task later.
Organizing Notes and Notebooks in Evernote
Now that you’ve created your first few notes in Evernote, it’s time to start organizing them.
On desktop, you can drag and drop notes directly into a Notebook by clicking and dragging on the note you want to move. This approach feels a little clunky, but it gets the job done. If the Notebook or Stack you’re moving a Note into is collapsed, it will expand after hovering over it for a second or so. To expand or collapse Notebooks and Notebook Stacks manually, simply click the caret to the left of the Notebook or Stack you want to expand or collapse.
For whatever reason, Evernote doesn’t always adhere to conventions from other software programs. For example, you can share Notes and manage Note permissions from the right-click contextual menu, but not rename them. This can be frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world.
Organizing Notes and Notebooks in Evernote can be very flexible. It all depends on how intricate your personal organizational system is.
On desktop, you can rearrange and sort Notebooks by a wide range of criteria. You can sort by Date Updated, Date Created, Title, Size, and Source URL. Each of these options has various sub-options. If you choose to sort Notebooks by Title, for example, you can then tell Evernote whether it should arrange the Notebooks in alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order. This flexibility can be really helpful if you have lots of Notebooks.
To change how your Notebooks are displayed, click the View button to the right of the organizational options. This brings up a contextual menu, from which you can choose several different views:
Evernote Space
Finally, the ellipsis icon gives you the option to rename, move, or delete Notebooks.
How to Search in Evernote
Once you’ve been using Evernote for a while, it probably won’t be long before you need to find something you saved weeks or even months ago. Fortunately, Evernote’s search functionality is very powerful.
On desktop, you can start searching for something by typing in the search field in the upper-right. You can search all of your Notes or within specific Notebooks. You can also add a number of search modifiers, such as Tag, Date Created, and Date Modified.
On mobile, tap the magnifying-glass icon to the left of the New Note button to access Evernote’s search function. Start typing in the search field and Evernote will return results that include that search term. Evernote will return results from individual Notes first, then Notebooks, then Notebook Stacks.
Evernote Spacemacs
If you’re using Evernote’s desktop app on a Mac, you can also take advantage of Evernote’s descriptive search feature. This allows you to describe what you’re looking for to Evernote, rather than use specific keywords. For example, you could enter “notes from Sweden” to search for all Notes created during your trip to Sweden. Similarly, you could search for “Notes with PDFs” to surface all saved Notes with PDF attachments.
Evernote Manual
Remember Everything
Evernote is a remarkably powerful tool that can handle a surprising range of tasks. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a great introduction to note-taking apps. As one of the oldest note-taking tools on the market, Evernote is also fully integrated with many other popular productivity tools, such as Google Drive, Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, and Slack. This makes Evernote even easier to use as part of your existing workflow.
Evernote Space
Hopefully, this tutorial has given you an idea of what’s possible with Evernote. Whether you’re looking for a tool to help organize a major research project or a digital alternative to pen-and-paper notebooks, Evernote is a solid organizational tool with some cool features. It’s far from the only tool of its kind, but it’s a solid starting point for newcomers to digital note-taking.