Most note-taking apps do the same things. Save and organize digital notes. Search saved notes, clippings, and files. Sync across multiple devices.
The 5 Best Ways to Use Evernote (That I Haven’t Tried Yet) 1. One of the ways Evernote Essentials author Brett Kelly uses Evernote is for building and updating a book. Organizing Your Life. Nancy Messieh uses Evernote templates to organize her life. She offers 6 template ideas. 6 ways to use Evernote to run a small business 1. Organize company info into separate notebooks. Spend some time thinking through the setup of your Evernote workspace. Scan and save bills, receipts, and business cards. Use the Evernote camera on your mobile device to scan bills.
Evernote and Microsoft OneNote both do all these things and more. Both tools let you save typed or handwritten notes, organize your notes into individual notebooks, and clip images, paragraphs of text, and even entire web pages as clippings for later viewing.
What’s interesting about both Evernote and OneNote is that, unlike email, document apps, or even instant messaging tools, note-taking apps aren’t often a core part of most work environments. You don’t necessarily need Evernote or OneNote the way you literally need email. They might not be essential, but they are useful.
But which of these tools is better?
Below, we’ve examined Evernote and OneNote in depth to see which note-taking tool reigns supreme. We looked at several individual categories, and we’ve made our recommendation toward the end of the post.
On the surface, there doesn’t appear to be much difference between Evernote and OneNote. Look a little closer, though, and the differences start to become more obvious. Let’s look at how the two apps compare in terms of:
Evernote as a second brain. I use Evernote as my second brain. I throw in to Evernote everything that I find useful so I can recall it later. I use Evernote to store information, scraps of data and references for future. This frees my first brain, the one on my head and shoulders, to focus on learning, problem solving and the other tasks it’s. Since the power of Evernote is its flexibility, arguments over which system is best won’t go away anytime soon. For all the unique people who use our product, there are limitless ways to harness it. From stacks to tags to no system at all, here is a roundup of some of our favorite organizational methods. Setup Difficulty Level: Easy.
- Organization
- Storage
- Search
- Pricing
- Overall user satisfaction
Organization: Winner = Draw
Both Evernote and OneNote rely on the notebook convention to describe how the two tools manage file organization.
Evernote organizes items into Notebook Stacks > Notebooks > Notes. OneNote uses a similar convention of Notebooks > Sections > Pages.
In addition to their central notebook conventions, both Evernote and OneNote also feature tag systems. Evernote’s tags function similarly to tags in WordPress. You can add a tag to any note and search by tags to find thematically relevant notes.
OneNote’s tags work very differently. They’re a lot more interactive and can be used for lots of different things. For example, you can add Reminder tags to a note to be reminded at specific dates and times. OneNote comes with more than 20 preset tags, from To-Do items and Client Requests to Music to Listen to and Book to Read. There’s even a Password tag.
Unlike Evernote, which limits tag placement to the Notes level, OneNote tags can be applied to any organizational element. Any Notebooks, Sections, or Pages in OneNote can have tags applied to them. You can add multiple tags to multiple elements on a page. For example, you could add a Contact tag to an image of a business card you uploaded after a meeting, a Reminder tag to follow up with that person at a specific date and time, and a Client Request tag to the action items you need to prepare for that meeting.
One of the biggest problems with Evernote is that the program itself can become sluggish once you reach a certain number of notebooks. Another major issue is that quick notes aren’t categorized by default, meaning that if you use Evernote to make lots of quick little notes, your file system in Evernote can quickly become a mess of Untitled Notes. For a tool that’s supposed to help us make sense of the information in our lives, this can be frustratingly counterintuitive.
I wouldn’t say tags in Evernote are “better” than tags in OneNote or vice-versa. It all depends on which system feels right to you and aligns with what you want from the tool.
Storage: Winner = OneNote
If you intend to use Evernote or OneNote simply to record your thoughts, storage isn’t that important. Individual text notes are tiny in terms of file size. So you don’t need to worry as much about running out of space.
If you intend to save a lot of documents and files, though, storage becomes a lot more important.
In terms of storage, Evernote is quite permissive but does have some hard restrictions:
- Evernote freemium accounts can have a maximum of 100,000 notes with a file-size restriction of 25MB per note. Premium subscribers can upload or capture notes up to 100MB in size.
- Evernote limits users to a maximum of 250 notebooks synced across a user’s account.
- Evernote restricts users to a maximum of 10,000 tags.
- Evernote allows users to save up to 100 searches.
- Evernote freemium accounts are limited to just 60MB of uploaded data per month, premium users to 10GB, and business users to 20GB.
Evernote’s maximum number of notes, notebooks, and tags is fairly generous. But the 60MB upload limit is very harsh. Even casual users are likely to run up against this restriction pretty quickly, especially when working with larger files such as high-resolution images.
Evernote retired its Plus tier in April 2018, which had a 1GB upload restriction. This forces users to choose between the limitations of the Free plan or 10GB of storage in the Premium plan. There’s no longer any middle ground between these two extremes––a 5GB limit would have been a solid compromise for many users.
OneNote handles storage completely differently:
- OneNote’s storage limits are connected directly to a user’s Microsoft OneDrive account; there are no restrictions on how many individual notes a OneNote user can save.
- OneNote Basic accounts offer individual uploaded file size restrictions of 25MB. Both Premium and Business subscribers are limited to uploads of up to 200MB per file––twice the size of Evernote’s maximum file size.
- OneNote’s free mobile version restricts users to 500 synced notes before prompting users to upgrade.
- Although the maximum file size you can upload to OneDrive is 15GB, the maximum file size you can upload to OneNote is 2GB.
The biggest problem with Evernote in terms of storage is the lack of a middle option. It’s either 60MB a month or 10GB a month. This makes sense for Evernote––Evernote’s harsh upload limits on its Basic plan are a powerful motivation to upgrade––but it doesn’t make sense for users.
OneNote’s reliance on OneDrive for storage is a blessing and a curse. It helps keep OneNote largely free and offers generous storage and upload limits. But it also forces prospective OneNote users to sign up for a OneDrive account. This isn’t ideal if users prefer a different cloud storage provider or don’t want to migrate from Google Drive or Dropbox to OneDrive.
If you plan on using either of these tools for simple note-taking, storage won’t be as important. If you need to save larger files or upload a lot of data, OneNote is the clear winner.
Search: Winner = Evernote
Note-taking apps help us record our thoughts. They’re somewhere for our random observations to live. If we can’t find our notes quickly and easily, then there’s not much point in saving anything. This makes search critically important.
When it comes to finding things, Evernote’s search functionality is solid. You can search by keyword or strings, as well as other search criteria such as where and when a note was created, media or attachment filetypes (such as PDFs, images, or audio files), and the people associated with or tagged in a note. Evernote also boasts a wide range of search modifiers that Google power users will find familiar.
OneNote’s search functionality isn’t quite as robust as Evernote’s search. OneNote’s search functionality can feel faster than Evernote’s (especially if you have a lot of notes stored) but offers fewer search operands. You won’t see OneNote’s Notebook search option unless those Notebooks are stored in OneDrive. And you can’t search across all notebooks using OneNote’s web version.
Pricing: Winner = OneNote
With Evernote’s Plus tier no longer available, Evernote has three levels of pricing:
- Basic (free)
- Premium ($7.99 per month)
- Business ($14.99 per user, per month)
Evernote’s Basic plan will probably be fine for casual users. For even moderate use, however, it’s not really viable due to Evernote’s upload restrictions. It’s worth remembering that this only really applies if you’re going to be saving lots of files and documents.
Evernote’s Premium plan lacks the restrictions of the Basic plan and offers a decent monthly upload limit. But at almost $96 for the year, it’s far from cheap––especially when OneNote offers so much for free.
Evernote’s Business plan is the most robust of Evernote’s plans. Although cost isn’t likely to be as important a factor for larger companies or enterprise teams, it’s still a considerable expense, especially as the number of users increases.
OneNote, on the other hand, is free. It isn’t even available as a premium version. All you have to decide is how much OneDrive storage you’ll need if any.
Microsoft’s basic plan, which offers 50GB of OneDrive storage, costs just $1.99 per month or $23.88 annually. For $6.99 per month, or $69.99 per year, you get 1,000GB of storage and access to Office 365 Personal edition.
Even if you don’t need Office or 1,000GB of storage, it’s still cheaper than Evernote’s Premium plan.
Overall User Satisfaction: Winner = Draw
Evernote and OneNote score comparably in terms of overall user satisfaction.
According to G2, a website that ranks software products by user reviews and Net Promoter Score (NPS), both Evernote and OneNote perform strongly. Evernote was named a Leader product by G2 in spring 2019 and received an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars across 1,352 user reviews.
OneNote was ranked as one of the Top 100 Software Products of 2019 by G2 and also received an overall rating of 4.4 stars out of 5 across 1,110 user reviews.
Technically, OneNote edges out Evernote––but only just. Evernote received slightly more one-, two-, and three-star reviews than OneNote did, and OneNote received slightly fewer reviews in general. Although this means OneNote beats Evernote narrowly in terms of user satisfaction, it’s too close to be conclusive, so we’re going to call it a draw.
Our Recommendation for Evernote vs. OneNote
Now that we’ve examined each tool in a little more depth, it’s time to declare a winner.
Taking everything into consideration, we have to recommend OneNote.
OneNote gives you everything Evernote can do for a fraction of the price. If you want to do more with your notes, such as add to-do lists and reminders, OneNote can do that, too. If you just want to take simple text-based notes and find them quickly, Evernote might be a better bet.
Evernote is a highly capable tool with a broad range of use cases. However, as a product, Evernote has lost its way in recent years. And it’s very hard to justify the cost when OneNote offers virtually identical functionality at a fraction of the price.
But it’s not just about cost. There’s more to it than that.
Aside from its dependence on OneDrive, OneNote is the clear winner for business users. It looks and feels like other Microsoft products. Some might see this as a negative, but it actually reduces the learning curve.
OneNote is also far superior for combining multiple types of information on the same page. For example, you can create a to-do list, add an image or table, and jot down some notes all on the same page. OneNote’s drag-and-drop interface, tabbed tagging system, and familiar toolbars make OneNote feel like Office might if Microsoft had acquired Notion.
Evernote looks and feels very sleek, but its performance and stability issues are problematic. Evernote has done an admirable job of doubling down on product quality, but some of these bugs have been around for years. For a premium product with a price tag to match, these frustrations are hard to justify.
In terms of writing and editing tools, Evernote has never positioned itself as a document tool. That said, its writing and document-editing tools are sorely limited. Creating quick notes feels anything but and highlights how poor Evernote’s default organizational structure can be. It doesn’t support markdown or HTML either.
Similarly, Evernote is a powerful tool but does a poor job of onboarding new users. Evernote’s tag system is much more flexible and useful than its default notebooks schema. It’s baffling why Evernote would almost completely overlook this aspect of its organizational structure in its learning resources and tutorials.
Of course, Evernote does do a few things better than OneNote.
One aspect of Evernote that really shines compared to OneNote is Evernote’s Web Clipper. This handy tool is available as a separate browser extension and allows users to quickly clip and save almost anything they find online. You can clip entire web pages as they appear, as simplified versions without images and special formatting, and even save web pages as PDF documents. OneNote’s clipper is fine, but it does struggle to preserve line breaks and other formatting rules. Evernote’s Web Clipper also offers “smart” recommendations on where clipped items should be saved based on analysis of their contents. This feature is a little rudimentary and isn’t always accurate, but it’s a nice feature.
Both Evernote and OneNote drop the ball when it comes to security. Evernote users can manually encrypt specific highlighted excerpts of text, but Evernote does not allow users to encrypt notebooks or even individual notes. OneNote doesn’t encrypt anything unless you’re a Business user. Granted, most people probably don’t need 256-bit AES encryption of their notes. But that’s beside the point––especially if you’re paying almost $100 a year for Evernote Premium.
Should I Ever Choose Evernote Over OneNote?
At this point, the only real reason to choose Evernote over OneNote is if you’ve already been using it for some time and don’t want to go to the trouble of exporting your notes to OneNote.
If you’re thinking of using Evernote or OneNote for the first time, we have to recommend OneNote every time.
Evernote is a powerful and robust note capturing system that can really support and enhance your effectiveness as a manager. Here’s my Ultimate Guide On how To Use Evernote As A Manager.
(Note: I no longer use Evernote. I have switched to DevonThink, but many of the same principles and processes still apply)
Fast access to information
As a manager it’s important to be able to access resources, notes and information scraps easily and quickly. You may need to recall a previous meeting decision quickly, or dig out some research for a new project, or find 1:1 notes for an upcoming discussion with a direct report. The less friction you have in trying to access these sources, the more effective and productive you may become.
Evernote is a perfect tool for the manager with lots to do. It’s on your phone, your tablet, your laptop, the web. It’s everywhere and it’s consistent in how it works.
So let’s get started with some ways you could use Evernote in your role as a Cultivated Manager.
Data protection
A word of caution before we get started though. The information and data that you create whilst working for an organisation must be protected for legal and intellectual property rights. If you are storing information about your employees you must be careful and be sure you’re following your company’s guidelines.
Information, 1:1 notes and other work related data should only be stored and used in tools and repositories approved by your business. I have found Evernote to be secure and suitable for work. Your company may disagree, or have a different set of tools in place. If this is the case then take from this article what is useful and fall back to your other tool for what it’s good at.
There is an Evernote business version available too.
Evernote as a second brain
I use Evernote as my second brain. I throw in to Evernote everything that I find useful so I can recall it later. I use Evernote to store information, scraps of data and references for future. This frees my first brain, the one on my head and shoulders, to focus on learning, problem solving and the other tasks it’s good at.
With a few simple clicks or searches I can find all of my relevant information quickly and easily.
I’ve already written a fairly in-depth piece on how to use Evernote as a Personal Knowledge Management System here. But in terms of management I use Evernote to store:
- Photos of whiteboards
- Meeting Notes and Minutes
- Plans and initiatives
- PDF documents for review
- Interesting articles on the web
- Lists of things to do
- 1:1 Notes
- Company guidelines
- Travel details such as flights, hotels etc
- Reading notes from Kindle
- Mind maps from XMind
The search facility in Evernote is really good – so finding things is easy.
The search bar in Evernote
However, when you rack up many thousands of notes the search can slow down and you’ll need to be more specific in your searches to narrow down the results.
How To Use Evernote Tutorial
Tags and Notebooks
I like to use notebooks and tags. Some people use one or the other, some use minimalist approaches. There are lots of different approaches to using tags and notebooks. Evernote has a short article on this topic here. Michael Hyatt has an article on how he uses Evernote here.
I like to structure high level folders and then use specific tags within the folders.
It’s worth experimenting with Evernote to find the best way to organise your notes. As you can see in the image above I like to use tags. But I also like to use notebooks, like the ones seen in the below screen grab. Notice how I use the “!” character to ensure those notebooks stay at the top of my list. I also use nested notebooks to create a sense of order.
List of notebooks in Evernote
Creating Public Shares
You may want to create a public facing version of a note, for example, to share with peers or to link to from your website. I often use Evernote to create public notes that people can view, and then consume in to their own Evernote accounts if they wish.
To share a note simply click the share at the top of the note. You can share by sending the note, or create a public link.
Presentation Mode
I’ve run a number of presentations from Evernote before in presentation mode. It’s not designed to replace a proper presentation with slides etc, but it’s a handy way of presenting your notes. It has plenty of limitations, but for sharing your notes on screen – it’s pretty useful.
Present a note screen grab
When you click the present button the note will move to full screen and you can then scroll through the presentation using the space bar. The cursor acts like a pointer. The major downside to presentation mode is that the text can often be really small – anyone know how to address this? Usb games controller for mac.
Snapshots of whiteboards
For years my life seemed to revolve around a whiteboard and sticky notes. Almost every meeting involved a whiteboard diagram with or without stickies. At the end of the meeting it’s useful to snap a picture and store it in Evernote.
On my old iPhone the Evernote app is really slow, so I tend to use the iPhone camera, and then either add the images directly to a note on my phone or grab the image from my Google Photo library and add to Evernote using the desktop.
Quick Add
There is a handy quick add feature on the Mac which is super useful for when you have an idea or thought that needs capturing quickly. Very handy indeed.
IFTTT
I now use an If This Then That recipe to create new Evernote notes based on my Google Calendar meeting entries. When I have a new client meeting Evernote has already created me a note ready to use. Super helpful.
There are loads of useful Evernote recipes on the IFTTT website.
Photos of written notes
I like to use pen and paper where possible. I also ban laptops from my meetings, but there is no need to lose the efficiency Evernote can bring. I take a photo of my written notes and store them in Evernote.
With the Premium account you get the ability to search within images and documents! That means it can scan your whiteboard and notebook snaps for words too. Powerful indeed.
XMind Integration
Long time readers will know I’m a big fan of mind mapping and Xmind is my preferred tool. It has a neat Evernote integration which allows me to send a mind map to Evernote – very useful indeed.
In the File menu in XMind simply choose the Save to Evernote option (you will need to set up authentication). You’ll get a few options about what information to sync to Evernote. I always choose to include “text” as well as the mind map.
Save to Evernote option in XMind
XMind will then sync the note to Evernote and a few seconds later you get the mindmap and file in Evernote.
Skitch
Skitch is amaaaaazing.
It’s a little tool that allows you to grab screen shots, edit images and annotate (all the image in this post were captured using Skitch.)
It’s integrated really well with Evernote (you’d expect that given it’s an Evernote product 🙂 )in that I can open an image in Skitch (or take a screenshot) and click the Sync to Evernote button and the image is saved to a folder in Evernote.
Screenshot showing Skitch folder in Evernote
Very powerful and useful indeed.
Send to Evernote
On almost every mobile device you have the ability to share what your creating or reading with many different sites and apps. I use the “share to Evernote” to store documents, webpages and images.
If I’m editing a photo for a Powerpoint I share it to Evernote. Interesting article on my phone, share to Evernote. New logos and social media poster for my blog, share to Evernote. Doodles from Paper on iPad, share to Evernote.
You get the gist – everything tends to end up in Evernote.
1:1 Notes
A real powerhouse use of Evernote is for storing 1:1 notes. (check you are allowed to do this with your HR and legal team.)
I don’t recommend you use your computer or phone during a 1:1. It’s rude. But after the 1:1 take a photo of your notes and upload to Evernote.
When I do this I do the following:
- Add a tag of the direct reports full name
- The full name helps if you end up with multiple people with the same name in your team
- Add a tag of “one2one” or whatever makes sense for you
- Be consistent in your naming conventions across notes
- Add a tag of the name of the company you are working for.
- If you move to a new company, you’ll want to find those notes easily and remove them
- Add the date / time to the note title of when the 1:1 took place
- It doesn’t matter if it’s different to the date/time stamp on the Evernote note itself.
A sample One2One note in Evernote
Once all tags are applied I would suggest moving the note in to a generic work folder, or whatever notebook structure works for you.
Share 1:1 notes
When it’s time for a new manager to take on your direct report, you may need to hand over your 1:1 notes. When this happens I recommend the following.
- Search for the notes for the direct report
- Select all of the notes returned, and merge them in to 1 master note.
- If you have lots of notes then it may be better to select a smaller number and essentially create a number of merged notes.
Then share the merged note via email to the new manager or HR.
This essentially bundles up all of the notes and includes them in the email. This is an effective way of sharing notes.
Most managers have very few records or notes of interactions with their directs. Be the manager who takes this very seriously – keeping regular notes of interactions should be a habit you try and get in to early in your life as a manager.
Feedback
Every time you have to give a candidate feedback create a new note with details of the feedback in it. I describe the feedback I’m giving and what I’m going to talk to the direct about.
I then add tags of:
- Direct reports name (same as used for 1:1)
- Feedback tag – “F+” for positive feedback. “F-” for negative feedback.
- Company name tag.
- Start the note title with Date/Time so there is a record of when the feedback was given.
- It doesn’t matter if the date/time in title is different to the date/time stamp on the note which is created by the Evernote system.
Audi Recording
The audio recording feature is super helpful. I use the audio recording when I’m unable to write a note down, or to record a long rambling thought that is better to get captured in sound, rather than words.
Screenshot of mobile voice recording evernote
It can also be helpful to record a conversation or meeting too. But before recording any meeting ensure you have permission from all attendees and be clear about why you are recording a meeting and what you plan to do with the recording.
Recording seems to be only available on mobile apps, but playback is available on desktop client – as shown below.
How To Use Evernote Templates
So there you have it – some ideas on how to use Evernote as a Technology Manager.
The key is unmitigated organisation. Being able to find something quickly should be a major skill of managers, and being able to find things quickly is easier if they are recorded, stored and logged effectively in the first place. Evernote is a great tool to help you do just that.
Happy management.