Microsoft is making big changes to OneNote for Windows: The Win32 desktop app will no longer be included in Microsoft Office. Instead, OneNote for Windows 10, the UWP app, will be included in 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.
Mar 17, 2014 - OneNote now on Mac, free everywhere, and service powered. OneNote for Mac is available for the first time and for free. OneNote is now free everywhere including the Windows PC desktop and Mac version because we want everyone to be able to use it. The OneNote service now provides a cloud API enabling any application to.
OneNote 2016 came and went without much fanfare, as Microsoft focused its efforts on the free app, the latest version of which is OneNote for Windows 10. Indeed, Microsoft added many of the top features from OneNote 2016 to the Windows 10 version, and also kept many of the updates exclusively for the latter, including intuitive inking, built-in intelligence, and improved accessibility. Then late last year, in the Office 2019 announcement, OneNote was not mentioned alongside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
At the time, Microsoft described Office 2019 as bringing “new user and IT capabilities for customers who aren’t yet ready for the cloud.” Given OneNote’s dependence on the cloud, and the fact that Office is a paid product while OneNote is free, the move to decouple the two was some three years in the making.
To be clear, OneNote is still included in Office. By making it available as a free download in February 2015, and now killing off the Win32 desktop version, Microsoft hinted and today confirmed that OneNote can stand on its own.
Microsoft will no longer update the OneNote 2016 app with new features. Support, bug fixes, and security updates will continue throughout the Office 2016 lifecycle — mainstream support for OneNote 2016 ends in October 2020 and extended support ends in October 2025. That said, OneNote 2016 will be optionally available for anyone with Office 365 or Office 2019; it simply will not be installed by default.
OneNote for Windows 10
This also means Microsoft doesn’t have to keep up development of two apps, since OneNote for Windows 10 will get all the attention, including any that would have inevitably gone to OneNote 2019. Microsoft has long struggled to explain the differences between the two apps, even creating a support page specifically addressing the question “What’s the difference between OneNote and OneNote 2016?”
There’s another side benefit to this change for Microsoft: Users will have another incentive to get Windows 10.
For this and other reasons, some still prefer OneNote 2016.
Here is Microsoft’s explanation today as to why OneNote for Windows 10 is superior:
Why OneNote for Windows 10? The app has improved performance and reliability, and it’s powered by a brand new sync engine (which we’re also bringing to web, Mac, iOS, and Android). You don’t need to worry about being on the latest version since it’s always up-to-date via the Microsoft Store, and it lets us deliver updates faster than ever before. In fact, over the last year and a half we’ve added more than 100 of your favorite OneNote 2016 features based on your feedback.
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.
New features
Microsoft also made a point today to show off new features coming to OneNote for Windows 10. The following three “top-requested features” will be arriving “in the coming months”:
Insert and search for tags: OneNote 2016’s tags feature is coming to OneNote for Windows 10, letting users insert, create, and search for custom tags. Tags you create will now roam with you to across your devices, and OneNote will even show you tags other people have used in a shared notebook so you don’t have to recreate them yourself.
View and edit files: See live previews of Office files in OneNote, work together on attached documents, and save space in your notebooks with cloud files. Microsoft describes this as “the benefits of saving a file on OneDrive with the context and convenience of an attachment or preview on a OneNote page.”
Additional Class Notebook features: The full slate of Class Notebook features available in the add-on for OneNote 2016 will be built into OneNote for Windows 10.
Microsoft didn’t give a timeframe for these additions other than “this summer.” Expect these updates to thus roll out by mid-September.
Today we announced three major OneNote developments, including the first version of OneNote for Mac. We are very excited and proud to deliver this to you today.
We’ve seen the countless requests for a Mac client of OneNote, and we’ve been hard at work to deliver it. We’ve been counting the days to finally share with you that OneNote for Mac is now available and you can download it from the App Store for free today!
While you’re downloading the app, check out this video of OneNote for Mac.
OneNote is your place to jot down your ideas, capture your collection of web clippings and research, plan your trips and events, check your to-dos and shopping lists and share your notes with friends and co-workers. It’s a single place to collect your thoughts and ideas, as well as an easy and fun way to stay organized.
Here are some of the main highlights of why we think you are going to love OneNote for Mac.
Create your notes as you wish
Similar to other Office for Mac applications, OneNote for Mac has the Ribbon user interface with a variety of options for formatting and styling your notes. Your notes can be styled however you like. You can choose that special font and color you like to use for your notes, or emphasize important content with bold, underline or highlights.
Sometimes notes contain lists. Whether it’s an invitees list for a party, or the checklist you use for traveling, you can manage your lists using multiple levels of bullets and numbering, and with quick shortcut keys you can re-order, strikethrough, format and more. In addition, if you want to remember, flag or track specific items, you can choose from over 20 styles of tags, such as a To Do tag to check off completed items.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so we make it easy for you to insert pictures in your notes and place them anywhere on your page. And when your notes are best organized in a table, you can easily do so with a variety of table formatting options, such as cell shading colors.
One of the unique characteristics of a page in OneNote is that it’s an infinite canvas where you can lay out different note containers with different content types anywhere you like on the page.
Familiar notebook experience
Your notes are structured in each OneNote notebook with sections and pages similar to paper notebooks. You can create a separate notebook for each of the different projects or aspects of your life, such as work, family, school and travel notebooks.
For instance, you can set up a travel notebook with a section for each of your upcoming trips. Each section can contain multiple pages for itinerary information, such as hotel research, flight options, sights to see and places to eat.
To help you easily find your notes and stay organized, you can re-arrange your notebook as you like, including dragging the pages and sections to change their order or location. And you can apply a color theme to sections to identify them at a glance.
Rest assured, you don’t have to remember where you placed each note. You can very quickly find any text, page, section or notebook by using search options.
Share your notes with others
Whether you’re working on a school project or planning an event with friends, OneNote for Mac enables you to collaborate with others on the same notebook. It syncs changes to and from OneDrive seamlessly and fast so that you can see everyone else’s edits and they can see yours. We make it easy for you to identify the changes made in your shared notebook by displaying the names of the different authors next to their edits.
Or, if you want to just share a specific page in your notebook you can simply email that page to others.
Your notes on all your favorite devices
We know how important it is for you to access your notes on all of your devices and for your notes to look exactly the same as you created them. Add a recipe to OneNote on your Mac, and you can view it on your iPhone in the grocery store. Research and plan a trip on your Mac at home and then easily access those same notes on your iPad during your trip.
All those notes you create on OneNote for Mac are synced to OneDrive and available to you on all your other OneNote clients, including OneNote for Windows desktop, Windows Store, Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, Android and OneNote Online.
These are only some of the highlights of OneNote for Mac—there’s so much more included in this version that we think you’ll enjoy. OneNote for Mac is compatible with Mac OS X 10.9 and above and you can download it for free from the App Store today. You can also visit http://www.onenote.com to access all the different OneNote apps including a few exciting OneNote services available today that will enhance your web capturing experience on OneNote for Mac.
And this is just the beginning. We hope you enjoy this first version of OneNote for Mac and encourage you to keep the comments, ratings and feedback coming to help us make future OneNote updates even better.