Updated OneNote for Android, a must-have tool for admins

[Michael Pietroforte]

I just updated the free OneNote app on my Android phone and I am happy that I finally have the ultimate notebook tool. Since you can synchronize your notes via SkyDrive with your desktop OneNote application, you always have your documentation and how-to notes with you.

OneNote was available before for Android, but the update comes with some essential new features. Most important for me is that you can now search in your notes. The new search function is really great!

I also like that you can now zoom the text. The old app used a very tiny font. The formatting has also been improved.

The only feature that is still missing is password protection. If you password protect a tab with the desktop OneNote, you won’t be able to open it on your phone.

The OneNote app is also available for the iPhone and Windows Phone.

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[Joseph Moody]

Now if only they would add an A-Z sort button! 🙂

[Michael Pietroforte]

Why don’t just sort your tabs?

[Joseph Moody]

I’m actually talking about the listing features within each page (or section of notes). They make an add-on for the desktop version.

[Michael Pietroforte]

You can sort those as well. But I guess you don’t want to do this manually.

[Ingmar Koecher]

I used OneNote on the iPhone a few years ago, when it first came out, and it was pretty bad back then.

I’ve been using EverNote since then, and generally like it. Has anybody used both, is there anything Microsoft OneNote can do that EverNote can’t do?

What’s nice about EverNote is that it has desktop apps on Windows/Mac in addition to the mobile editions.

[Michael Pietroforte]

When I first saw the OneNote Android app I also considered moving to EverNote. I tried the EverNote Windows application and didn’t like the old fashioned user interface and the way notes are organized. I also didn’t want to create one more place in the cloud to store my data. And would my data be safe with a startup company?

I knew that Microsoft takes the cloud series now and that they would improve the OneNote app sooner or later. So I stayed with the OneNote Windows application and used the Android app only every now then. I think this is going to change now.

[Ingmar Koecher]

Interesting. The latest version of Evernote seems to work pretty well, though I’d have to agree that their interface is not the most exciting, and the ads are pretty annoying (I’m assuming OneNote doesn’t have ads?)?

But, they are just notes, so I’m not too concerned about their availability, especially since they are locally cached anyways. Even if the company goes out of business, I should still have my notes. I can’t say that I trust Microsoft any more or less than I would trust Evernote. I think I’d actually trust a small startup more than Microsoft.

To me, another advantage is that Non-Microsoft products usually support the Mac better. Both Evernote and Wunderlist – which I both use, have native Mac clients. I presume OnetNote doesn’t have that?

But, if you’re mainly a Windows user with an Android phone than I suppose it makes sense to use OneNote 😉

[Michael Pietroforte]

OneNote for Android doesn’t show any ads. I guess it is the same with the version for the iPhone and Windows Phone. The desktop version belongs to the Office suite and I guess it also available for Macs.

The problem with all apps which store data in the cloud is that you if something goes wrong with synchronization your local copy might become useless if data is deleted locally right after you log on. If you only notice it after weeks that data is missing then even your local backups might become useless. Since local and remote data are synchronized all the time you actually always have only one copy.

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