In all of the hype Tuesday about the Chrome browser for Android, another app was released that is useful to many Microsoft Office users and may have been overlooked. OneNote for Microsoft Office was finally released for Android. That's right, a Microsoft Office app on Android.
I was a big OneNote user for a very long time. I used it to write down everything. Personal, business, to do lists, screen captures of apps and errors all were captured into OneNote for me to be able to search and find at a later time. About a year and a half ago I became increasingly frustrated that I could not take these notes with me on the go. Since there was no Android app for OneNote I eventually started using Evernote. I like Evernote in as far as it has a client for almost every platform and I like that it syncs across devices.
However, one area where I get flustered with Evernote is in the tagging and creation of documents. In OneNote I can set a default template for when I want to keep all of my notes in a section looking the same. I also have tabs in OneNote that I can label and just create a new note under that tab which is essentially tagging it. In Evernote I have to create a new note then tag it to keep it together with other like documents. If I want it to look the same as other notes I had to create a template. I open the template first and copy the entire note then go open my new note and paste all of this in. I then have to go tag it. Several steps to do what I can do in OneNote in one or two clicks.
Now that Microsoft has released the Android app for OneNote I have started moving back to OneNote. In fact, I am using it to write this review. At this moment I have over 500 notes in Evernote. Getting all of those documents over to OneNote again has proven to be a labor of love. I found a free tool that will move 50 notes at a time over from Evernote to OneNote. If you have a large number of notes you may want to consider alternative methods of moving the notes over. None of the options are great but it can be done.
When you open OneNote for Android it prompts you to login to your Skydrive account to download online notebooks. I used my credentials and the app showed my notebooks in the list. Because I had so much data stored there it took a few minutes to get everything down to the phone. If you have local versions of notebooks it is probably a good idea to create Skydrive based versions of them to allow your phone or tablet to sync them. With the free web based version of OneNote now available you could also open them from a browser if you are not able to use the full client. I have used this at times and found it to be very handy.
Another advantage I see of OneNote over Evernote for Android is editing notes. I want to just open the app, create or open an existing note and start typing. When you open a note in Evernote I don't like how it makes you go into the menu and select edit on an existing note. It can take too long and just seems cumbersome. With OneNote you open a note and can click to start typing. This is a much more efficient way to use notes on a mobile device. If someone needs to tell me something that I want to jot down I want to open the note and go.
There is no widget for OneNote yet but since this is a new app for Android I would hope that someone will develop it. Since the app loads so quickly I find just the icon is sufficient for now. Having all of my notes in the cloud and across all of my devices through a familiar application is going to save me time and frustration. If you are a OneNote user or your company supports users of Office products give this app a try.
The free version works with up to 500 notes. To buy the full version you can purchase it within the app at a cost of $4.99. I bought the full version since I was over the 500 note limit and I know that I will use it daily. For most people the free version will work to allow you to really see how nice OneNote really is.
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