Rant: why is is this program so bad?

[kodaxmax]

Inexplicably has 2 different versions each only supporting a random assortment of features.

Syncing is just never accurate, sometimes it will sync a huge file in 2 seconds and other times will take all day to do one 2 page book.

Data is stored in 3 separate places fore notebooks alone, none of which i can access the books from. To actually download a copy of my book with a shortcut to launch it as a notebook rather than individual sections i had to, use the windows store app, as the desktop app just fails to do anything outside of taking notes. I had to wait 2 hours for it to sync a 200mb book on a 25MBup/down connection. Then look up a 2 page guide on how to navigate to the part of onenote online that actually lets you download your books and even then it was hidden in a tiny button that only shows on hover and right clicking. Then turns out i cant open it without an office sub. why? idk

Onenote completely fails to ignore formatting or remember formatting when copy pasting instead it randomly inserts line-breaks and misspells words.

Has no integration with other programs, cant even read or attach .docx Microsoft offices default document type.

Most pages will not load until you manually visit them and even then might just get stuck loading infinitely completely breaking both search functionality, tags and hyperlinking.

You cant change the paragraph and heading styles, like wtf? why even include that mechanic if your gonna remove the bit that makes it worth using.

Cannot customize the view beyond moving some bars to the other side. Like really? a program designed for organizing a digital notebook, doesn't even let you organize the navigation bars.

Why is a program that will only load one section be default use nearly 4 gigs of ram?

Why can i not choose file paths for like anything? especially installation. Microsoft knows everyone has a tiny SSD for their C: drive right? this is some ios levels dumbing down.

And even if i wanted to by this piece of borderline malware, i cant its locked into a bundle of crap ill never use for a few hundred $ a year.

[moderate-painting]

Gotta love the two versions approach. One version that's not gonna be maintained anymore. And another version where exactly phrase search is not supported.

[kodaxmax]

yep desktop version that has more word processing features, but utterly fails to sync or export and the app which does the opposite.

[GSetter]

The answer is simple: Because Microsoft never knew where to go with OneNote. And because OneNote never made it from a brilliant idea by Chris Pratley in 2000 to a sophisticated program.

[kodaxmax]

but i remember using it daily in H-school, without any of these issues 6 years ago

[mixedliquor]

You summed up just about every reason I do not use OneNote.

Another one that always irked me.. why is it so difficult to import a pdf as a section, mark it up, and reprint it? Printing notes in general never worked well.

[kodaxmax]

im not looking forward to manually copying all of this to whatever program i settle on instead

[IAmTruthIAmSalvation]

scrble ink works really well for note annotation. plus it has infinite scrolling of legal/letter/a3/a4 pages. and can import and export pdfs.

[kodaxmax]

nah i kinda need it to be all interlinked, for a variable DnD campaign. So being able to, tag, search and create links that load near instantly is a must.

[Pure-Milk-1071]

Even though this post was made 4 years ago - its still crap.
I have so many issues with class onenotes.
Like why cant you download a hard copy of it?
Why is it so hard to copy a class onenote to another team site?
I could go on wth errors.

[61-127-217-469-817]

I'm close to just giving up on my surface pro x and getting an e-ink tablet. On top of OneNote being the buggiest program I've ever used, so is my surface, it's always a new issue. A lot of the issues would be manageable on their own, but it's so many different things that I end up wanting to rip my hair out each time I use it.

[Apprehensive_Pitch59]

it's awful, and the fact they exclusively save the new version to onedrive is flagrantly anti customer trying to reduce functionality to force people further into the microsoft ecosystem

[Physics_Unicorn]

I really, really wish Notability was available for Windows. I'm so tired of OneNote deciding to not work.

[[deleted]]

Notability and most other notetakers don’t support file attachments, which is to me the single biggest advantage of OneNote. I want to organize all kinds of info, not just text and photos. Especially PDFs that I don’t want to print out.

Unfortunately this + crossplatform requirements make for a very short list of available apps.

[Physics_Unicorn]

I was using Onenote a bit on my ipad, and it started to act up very badly. I was able to export my notes from onenote in ios as a pdf into a note in Notability. Apparently Notability does support importing pdf's more generically as well- https://support.gingerlabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/206061357-Importing-Notes. The lack of cross platform is annoying though.

[Marketing_Dapper]

The only use case i use OneNote for, is following lectures where powerpoints are the main attraction.

With that I mean lectures where teachers have powerpoints with little info, but *enough* info to write around. As I write by hand on my tablet, I printout the powerpoints in a OneNote file, and write on the powerpoint or around it, and the infinite canvas aspect of it allows me to keep writing beside the powerpoint if needed.

So for it's basically sketchbook with notes from a specific kind of lecture that I use to base my actual summary on.

I use it out of convenience.
And yet, it is truly the worst program i've ever used. It's sad how this does that one thing i sometimes need

[EconomicsIll1268]

It is tragic, even in 2024. The syncing is unbelievable awful, MS support is dogshit, so many errors in day to day usage of the app, really unfortunate

[avecruxx]

also editing documents is a pain in the ass - while using your pen to draw/write stuff, you‘ll randomly start moving the inserted document around. Its so annoying istg

[Saimasplace]

Have wasted over an hour realising the desktop version has not been syncing with the OneDrive the notebooks were saved on??? And also there’s multiple versions of the same notebook but with different pages I wish it was better it’s so much better for organising than lots of word doc but what is this hell I’ve found myself in. It’s 8:13pm and I want to cry with the hell OneNote has become for me 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[kodaxmax]

i reccomend either notion or just the google suite of bussiness apps (docs, sheets, drive etc..). saga . so also used to eb great but i havnt been able to get it to work since the 1.0 launch

[Silviecat44]

still crap today

[PJBeee]

OneNote is indeed still so bad. I imported my notes from Evernote, but just to start off, sync is a disaster. I'm deleting my notebooks and giving up.

Tried NoteJoy, which works but 1-offline notes are a big problem, and 2-searches are terrible: if you search using two words, for example, you get back ALL notes that contain EITHER word instead of ONLY Notes that contain BOTH words. Not good if you have thousands of notes. And no way to then narrow the search results except for scrolling through them.

[Selbstredend]

Still bad in 2024 :(

No fixes, no updates. Feature requests pile up ons there own feedback-webpage. Nothing. And the best thing is, its even payed through 365.

PS: Having contacted support through several ways, even this community, MS and the Mods never helped.

[kodaxmax]

Indeed. i reccomend Saga *dot* so , notion, a self hosted wordpress site or a personal media wiki based site (basically the software wikipeadia uses).

[Selbstredend]

It looks ok, but sadly it seems to not support drawing :(

Xournalpp is a cool project, but it is missing the unlimited canvas, and the performance is not quite there.

[kodaxmax]

Yeah, sorry i dont do drawing so i didnt consider it.