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Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Drops OneNote From Office, Pushes Users To Windows 10 Version (venturebeat.com) 72

Posted by msmash from the musical-chair dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is making big changes to OneNote for Windows: The desktop app will no longer be included in Microsoft Office. Instead, OneNote for Windows 10, the UWP app, will be the default OneNote experience for both Office 365 and Office 2019. OneNote for Mac, Android, iOS, and the web are unaffected. The move shouldn't be a huge surprise for those paying close attention to OneNote's development. Back in February 2015, Microsoft made OneNote for Windows completely free by removing all feature restrictions. This untethering of OneNote from Office meant users could download OneNote 2013 for Windows 7 and Windows 8 without having to pay for Office 2013.
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Microsoft Drops OneNote From Office, Pushes Users To Windows 10 Version More

Microsoft Drops OneNote From Office, Pushes Users To Windows 10 Version

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  • Is One Note really useful? (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @02:52PM (#56459575)
    I only really used it on Windows Phone, where it is easy to take a picture of something and create custom note along with it. Like a wine you had at a restaurant.
    • I use it a bit.
      I keep recipes and troubleshooting notes I like just in case the site or page is lost for whatever reason.
    • We use it at my office all the time for weekly status meetings.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      We use it a lot at work. I was a reluctant user, but have become kind of addicted to it.

      It has some annoyances, like not being able to sort pages within a section, the linking functionality doesn't work like I think it should (ie, it'd be great to create a link to an object on a different page/section/notebook and have the linked object dynamically update).

      But once you get used to it, it's a surprisingly useful way to keep track of shit. I keep my notebooks in a dropbox folder and despite using the same n

    • I was going to say I have never used it, then I remembered that at Microsoft they used One Note the way everybody else in the world uses Wiki pages -- to store random information about a project developers are working on.

    • Re:Is One Note really useful? (Score:5, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @03:27PM (#56459831)

      I used OneNote once to write a very, very - very - short song. I'm now using TwoNotes.

    • It certainly seems like it ought to be really useful, but I don't use it a whole lot. The best use case I've used it for so far has been meeting minutes.
    • I'm one of those people who liked to write down everything I came across that was interesting or I thought I might find useful later - phone numbers, addresses, directions, procedures for problems I'd solved, comparisons I did when shopping, etc. This was long before web browsers, bookmarks, and search engines. I used to jot all this down in a small notebook I carried everywhere, and went through about 1-2 notebooks a month. The problems I had with jotting all this info down on paper were:
      • You can't rea

    • Yes! God yes. I use it daily for work. It's one of the few programs that was great from the start, and it shows it wasn't originally created by the Office team.

      Aside from actual note taking, the ability to put all sorts of random things and files into your notebooks, syncing across devices as you go, it also has phenomenal pen support and is pretty damn good at reading my handwriting too making my notepad searchable.

      OneNote was the last part of my effort to turn my office paper free.

    • Man, there are days that I think it's the best piece of software Microsoft has ever created. I use it every day, and it's fast, easy to use, and has great searching and some thoughtful workflow options. It has clients for every platform (that I use). I love it. I'm kinda bummed about the transition, because the "legacy" client still does quite a bit more, but the modern version is slowly catching up, to the point where I at least don't mind using it.

  • So the less useful version. (Score:4, Informative)

    by DarkRookie ( 5030953 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @02:53PM (#56459583)
    I know I havent played with it in a bit, but doesn't the UWP app and site have WAY less features that the desktop version.
    If that is still true, this idea can go fuck itself.

    • Re: So the less useful version. (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yup. Cloud-only, for instance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      So what is a good alternative to OneNote? I've been using it for years to collect my notes, but it looks like I need to switch to something else now.

      There is Google Keep and a bunch of other cloud services, but I'd rather have something that stores the data locally.

      • You really don't. The "legacy" client isn't going anywhere, and runs just as great as ever. In 5 years maybe it will be different, but then again, in five years it will be different!

    • I know I havent played with it in a bit, but doesn't the UWP app and site have WAY less features that the desktop version.

      If that is still true, this idea can go fuck itself.

      The UWP version was very feature poor years ago but it's picked up a LOT. However interestingly enough it picked up features that don't exist in the Office app either. e.g. camera support. So now it's not like one version is the poor person's freebe compared to the other, but that they are both actively different.

      I still prefer the Office version though.

  • Other than minor security updates and sneaking in telemetry Windows 7 and 8.1 are abandoned by Microsoft. Microsoft will make more of its software Windows 10 only way before 2020/3 and try to get everyone in the Microsoft Store Ecosystem.
    • They can pry 7 from my cold dead hands
      Or, hopefully, WINE might be good enough to play all the game by then.

    • Poorly constructed headline.

      Microsoft only dropped it from office 2019. You can continue to use the desktop versions of 2010,2013, and 2016 and OneNote desktop won't ever be uninstalled. But yes office 2019 will not support Windows 7. It is MacOSX Sierra and Windows10+ only. If you use Office 2019 it won't matter anyway as you will be using Windows 10

  • E^3 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Rip office one note, officially extinguished now. Yet another product falls prey to Microsoft's evil tactics!

  • OneNote becomes ZeroNote
  • Ah, the bliss of being Microsoft-ignorant. Even better when one can make a very good living, while having fun - and remaining ensconced in such ignorance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtwrek ( 208688 )

      The only thing I know about OneNote is it's some bastard of an Microsoft program that keeps leaving "Open Notebook.onetoc2" turds in every directory, on every network drive.

      A little googling gives me an idea of what these turds are, and some useless ideas on how to stop them. But in a corporate environment, where potentially hundreds, if not thousands of users have access to some network directories, finding the computer / process/ user that's creating these turds is impossible.

      I run a find -exec command o

      • By default OneNote uses Office 365 Onedrive to sync up. If you have it at work try to put in a GPO to enable this by default as they do not belong on corporate shared drives.

  • Forcing us to use Universal Apps (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @03:55PM (#56460003) Homepage

    I have both versions of OneNote on my Windows 10 machine at home. Sometimes it brings up the universal version, and I go "What is this? This isn't onenote is it? oh, it's that crappy version." Then I close it and open the real one. Universal Apps f*ing suck. The only way Windows 10 is useful to a power user is if they turn off all the universal apps and replace them with real Windows applications. Microsoft should have given up on this garbage when Windows 8 bombed. They destroyed what was left of their OS, and now it is only useful for running Visual Studio, Office, legacy applications. Oh, and games.

    From the article:

    And still, there are OneNote 2016 features that aren’t in OneNote for Windows 10. Microsoft is asking users to help prioritize what to port over by submitting suggestions in Windows 10’s Feedback Hub.

    Yess!! This same sad story exists for all their UWP apps. Ex: The Windows XP "Picture and fax viewer" has more features than the "Photos" viewer that comes in Windows 10. It's the same with their new .NET stuff. Entity Framework ".NET Core" doesn't have all the features of Entity Framework 6 for .NET. And they have a page for submitting requests for features, which is full of closed issues for things they won't ever do. The Windows Mail app is functionally inferior to the old Outlook Express app that used to come with Windows. Every time they re-invent themselves, they force themselves to rewrite all their own software, ultimately delivering less and less functionality while offering less and less freedom.

    This is why Steambox is exiting: The day most of my games support Linux, a lot of people will be out of reasons to keep using Windows. UWP isn't keeping anybody on the platform.

    • UWP are excellent for touch screen devices. The only decent touch oriented PDF readers for windows are UWP apps only (sadly) accessible via the Windows Market Place.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        That's good to know. I suppose it isn't UWP itself that is the problem. It is that the UWP apps are usually not feature-rich when compared to their desktop counterparts. Perrhaps, in the future, UWP apps will start to have power-user functionality.

        • I suspect you are right. The old apps that we use (and love) have mostly existed for a very long time, and have developed a lot of functionality over time. It takes a *ton* of work to do a rewrite that is feature complete. I think it's why some of the "new" stuff, like the UWP PDF readers are pretty great: they are new and aren't ports of existing stuff. They just started scratching the developers' biggest itches, and consequently are really good (sometimes) at what they do.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      It's the same with their new .NET stuff. Entity Framework ".NET Core" doesn't have all the features of Entity Framework 6 for .NET.

      The day most of my games support Linux, a lot of people will be out of reasons to keep using Windows. UWP isn't keeping anybody on the platform.

      It's funny you put both of those sentences there. The reason .NET Core doesn't have all the features of EF6 for .NET is *precisely* because .NETCore runs on linux.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        Touché, I see the irony. I suppose that is what happens when you make a framework that caters to the least common denominator between platforms. :-(

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Microsoft should have given up on this garbage when Windows 8 bombed.

      Not gonna happen. Now they're bent on forcing their Walled Garden down any throat they can get their hands on. They can't stand the thought of users being able to control their own computers anymore (and being cut out of the profit margins Apple gets by essentially, for all intents and purposes, owning the hardware the customer has paid for). Hence things like Windows 10 S being pushed. Expect to see more attempts at this. Rather forceful ones, considering how they tried to ram Windows 10 itself down t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      That is totally accurate for me windows as a OS is simply a game console, all other apps I run, run on Linux and I made sure of that, just games and existing hardware keep me on windows. So not really keep me because I am not buying anything M$, since windows & came with the PC years ago.

    • Partially. There are also features of the UWP version that don't exist in the main OneNote, which as a user of the Office version is just infuriating.

  • Experience.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    the default OneNote experience

    I just want to throttle anyone that uses the word "experience" like that with the exception of anyone talking about the Arnold Rimmer or Jimi Hendrix Experience.

  • UWP and Windows 7 doesn't mix. One hopes that the current OneNote will still be available too...

  • I liked the desktop version of OneNote. I even uninstall the one from Windows 10 as I like the features and integration with OneDrive for Business and the browser plugins to OneNote a page.

  • Ever since Works was a useless pile of crap, I haven't touched One Note. I legitimately have no idea what it even does. Is it some kind of keyword tagging organization/project thing that tries to sell you more products like Works did?

    • OneNote takes clippings from your browser and other office products to put together in a page as well as make hand written notes if you have a MS Surface or tablet/hyprid device. It is quite cumbersome but handy once you get used to it verses cut and pasting it in a word processer. You can for example with the OneNote extension take a sample of a website and send to a onenote tab and add notes or clip an email attachment in Outlook.

      Evernote on Android and IOS has similiar functionality.

  • I still have no idea what it is.. all I know it crashes every now and then on my desktop and mobile, too. I have never felt the urge to find out what it is and what it should do.

    • It is exactly what it says in the title. One place for your notes. It's an electronic notebook, just like a real notebook books and tabbed sections, and pages, and ruled lines, and pen support.

      And electronic too, typeable, searchable, useful for graphics, embedding documents, capturing images, annotating etc etc.

      Its the only Office app I have open more frequently than Outlook, and at least one of my computers autostarts Outlook.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        It is exactly what it says in the title. One place for your notes.

        I already have plenty of "places" for my notes, and they belong in the file types I keep them more than they would in "one place".

        • People with this attitude remind me of the holdouts who prefer individual browser windows to a tabbed interface. There are a few out there, but the rest of us have moved on to a more efficient form of use.

          I, too, used to prefer having a folder structure with the various types of files layered throughout it. I still do create these structures and separate some things I like to stand alone. For everything else that has heavily related and connected content, OneNote is invaluable.

        • Hey mate, you do you. The fact your talking file types and places probably means you missed the point, or maybe you just have a different organisational system. If it works for you more power to you.

  • I use OneNote regularly, both at work and home, and heavily for organizing D&D/RPG campaigns. There are too many features (the tagging, is incredibly important) missing from Windows 10 OneNote for me to make the switch. Once there's enough parity, I could probably migrate, but it's seriously impaired without the features that make it most useful.

  • I actually use OneNote across a Windows PC, a Mac, and my phone while syncing all of my notebooks to OneDrive. It has become a challenging experience over the years; the feature parity between each version is laughable to the point that anything I do away from the PC is a "draft" so I can correct the formatting later on 2016. Syncing is also terrible despite my notebooks existing in Microsoft's own ecosystem. It is a slow and unreliable process - too often does OneNote report that there were errors syncing,

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