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They each have their specialty. Evernote is better for filing documents / archiving things - whether those are PDFs, web pages, business cards, physical mail,
by tjohns 8y ago
They each have their specialty.
Evernote is better for filing documents / archiving things - whether those are PDFs, web pages, business cards, physical mail, etc. OneNote is better for free-form notetaking and editing. Each page feels like an open canvas.
In particular: I can't drop a file directly onto the OneNote icon to archive a file - I have to make a "page" and drop it into the page's canvas. OneNote doesn't provide tagging. It enforces a certain organization that only makes sense for notes (notebooks > sections > pages). Attachments always feel like a second-class citizen inside of a page (which isn't to say OneNote's attachment handling is wrong, it's just designed for storing handouts in class alongside your handwriting, as opposed to archiving every piece of paper on your desk).
In my use case, I use Evernote (with a ScanSnap scanner) to archive every piece of physical mail I receive. It's great that I can just throw in a pile of mail, push one button, let the scanner bundle it into PDFs/JPEGs/contact cards as appropriate, apply metatadata, and OCR/index it. I tried to move this workflow to OneNote, and couldn't get anything as smooth.
I use both. I use OneNote for notes in class, and Evernote for long-term archival/recall of everything else.
(Personally, I think that DevonThink is a closer replacement to Evernote than OneNote is.)
- zwayhowder 8y agoI spent years with the same workflow, and Evernote groaned to a halt with over 5000 PDFs in it for me. (i7, 16gb ram). I now store all my scans in Google Drive and use the OCR that comes with the ScanSnap. It works just as well, the search is Google fast and I can share them easily.
- brantonb 8y agoMy boss today wondered why he made a particular decision for a commit he made 3 years ago. He pulled up Evernote, searched for the bug number, and had his notes from when he was working on it. Mystery solved. With OneNote, he’d have to have some sort of filing system to organize that. With Evernote, he knew it was there and he could search for it if he needed it. That’s not to say you can’t search in OneNote, just that the archiving model of Evernote works far better for his workflow.