If you're a user of Microsoft's Office suite, as so many of us worldwide are, then you've probably accidentally (or intentionally) opened OneNote. Microsoft's long-lived note-taking app has been with us for years, first released all the way back in 2003, but for much of that time it's been an afterthought. It is neither a professional tool nor has it been competitive with slicker, cheaper, and more modern note apps from the competition. But in recent years, OneNote has had a bit of a resurgence, and I'll say it quietly, but in my view, it has slowly been taking its place as Microsoft's best productivity tool.

OneNote is a tool I've used for years, all the way through two degrees and years in the industry, and it's only been getting better throughout the past two decades. Here's why I think that OneNote is one of Microsoft's hidden gems, and why increased attention isn't always a good thing.

OneNote stands out from the competition

While admittedly it's taken a long time to get here, OneNote increasingly stands out from its competition with a wide array of features for casual users, power users, and businesses alike. It shares the same cross-platform and collaboration tools as the rest of the Office suite, which in recent years have improved significantly (after years of lagging far behind similar offerings from Google Docs), allowing multiple users to work on the same notebook. It has its own built-in permission system, allowing you to share limited access to your notebooks on a per-page level, as well as a feature-filled tagging system which makes organizing your work outside a file-tree easy.

OneNote is the king of mixed-media content, with support for everything from casual sketches to voice-memos placed anywhere in your notebook. It also brings over several of the Office suite's strong points, like functioning as a basic word/document processor, although it is more limited than Word.

OneNote integrates with the rest of the Office suite

This aspect is useful if you're a user of other Microsoft products, and is especially relevant in a business environment. OneNote can integrate with Outlook, allowing you to create tasks and set reminders directly inside OneNote. There's also Sharepoint and Teams integration, among a host of other business-friendly features.

This can be a mixed bag. If you're not tightly integrated with Microsoft's ecosystem, then most of this may feel like annoying (and pushy) bloat inside a good product. Personally, I'm a tight user of Microsoft professionally - often you're not given an option of what you use in the workplace - though I make little use of it personally.

The competition has slipped away

The competition has been slowly slipping further away from what OneNote offers. A few years ago, the likes of Notion, Evernote, and even Google Keep may have been note apps coming up as close competition, but one by one, these have all either stagnated in their development or entirely lost their footing.

In my opinion, Evernote was previously the strongest contender here, but a complete rewrite of its software platform, followed by its sale to a third party, has left many users feeling that the app is in a worse state than it was originally. It hasn't been seeing the same development of new features it once did. Evernote still has great third party integrations, and easily has the best search function of all these options, but it's certainly not regarded as highly as it once was. Google Keep is probably the weakest offering from the above, with its lightweight nature being a selling point, but its lack of features certainly put it behind Microsoft's offering (arguably they're products with entirely different target audiences).

Notion is a recent contender, but seems to struggle from significant bloat. Personally, I've found the database-like style of organization in Notion to be overkill, templates for pages are difficult to set up, and generally the whole package feels sluggish. Notion feels more like a serious project management tool to me than a note-taking app, which is perfectly fine, but for general note-taking, studying, or collaborative work, I'll be sticking with OneNote.

Modern competitors are arriving

Having said that, there are certainly some modern competitors looking to fill the gaps left by competition in this space. Obsidian and Craft are both modern, clean note-taking apps with a range of great features and integrations. Obsidian really takes the note-linking or sub-sectioning feature of OneNote to the next level, allowing you to link your notes into complete graphs akin to a mind map. Craft is a stylish, sleek alternative with plenty of AI powered features and a template system similar to Notion, but lacks some of the features geared towards power users or integrations that you'll find in OneNote. Even Apple is taking a stab at this market segment, with a vastly improved iOS Notes app.

OneNote has been out of the Microsoft spotlight

OneNote seems to have been allowed to occupy a rare place inside Microsoft. It's constantly improving, with at least some team dedicated to adding new features, integrations, and bug fixes. However, it's stayed out of the spotlight, and has been saved from some of the more serious revamps targeted at the likes of Word and Excel in recent years (although it has recently been 'gifted' Copilot support). OneNote has a stable history, and has developed incrementally over the last decade. For me, this is a huge positive. In an age of free-app rug-pulls and crazy subscription pricing (I still refuse to pay £5 a month for a Calendar app, @flexibits), having a long backlog of your notes available from years of study or work feels reassuring.

I can still read and interact with handwritten notes, huge folders of typed documents, and images from well over ten years ago, without any crazy migrations or worries about support. The interface hasn't changed significantly, and Microsoft seems (at least for now) committed to supporting it for the long term, as they have added a UWP version in recent years. It's retained great cross-platform support, and has one of the most reliable syncing systems for note-taking that I've come across.

If you're a student or professional, OneNote is better than ever

Choosing a note-taking app isn't so much a choice between apps, but rather ensuring that the app you rely on will be the right one for your use case. If you're taking quick notes on the go, or keeping a rolling TODO or shopping list, the likes of OneNote and Notion are probably far inferior to Google Keep or Apple Notes, or a dedicated to-do list app. That said, if you're a student or professional looking to organize a large collection of information, notes, or data, definitely consider OneNote. It's far from perfect, but I've increasingly felt that it's Microsoft's hidden gem in the Office suite, offering a feature-rich and long-lasting platform.