No local file storage for OneNote on Mac version?

Without wanting to sound harsh, you are joking, aren't you?

Kim ~ The part of my post you omitted where I wrote: "it's far from ideal", should indicate that I'm not joking. And although my suggestion doesn't suit you, perhaps other readers who already have Boot Camp & Windows installed on their Mac, will find the remaining steps trivial to do.

Without wanting to sound harsh, you are joking, aren't you?

"1. Create a Boot Camp partition for Windows on your Mac

2. Purchase & install Windows 7 or 8 on that partition

3. Download OneNote 2013 (for Windows) for free

4. Open OneNote 2013 and sync with OneDrive

5. Reboot into OS X partition

6. Open OneNote for Mac and use the same MS account used in step 4

7. Remove WIndows partition (optional)"

Onenote support suggested I use a PC to transfer my files to Onedrive where they would be available to Onenote for Mac. I don't own a PC.

Kim ~ See if my post here helps:

Open .one files in OneNote for Mac?

(Sorry — I don't know how to link to a particular post in a thread.)

And note that if your notebooks are in OneNote 2007 format, you'll have to first convert them to the new OneNote 2010/2013 format — see HERE.

Chris:

I'm a long time user of Onenote, previously on PC. I moved over to Mac a few years ago and used Outline, keeping my old notes and adding to them. I now have many years of Onenote notes on my Mac hard drive. I'd now like to start using Onenote but because it does not support local files I can't get my existing notes into Onenote. I'm not going to cut and paste hundreds of pages from Outline to Onenote, even if it did work. Copying the files over to Onedrive doesn't do so in a way Onenote for Mac can read them. I am effectively prevented from using Onenote in the way I'd like.

Onenote support suggested I use a PC to transfer my files to Onedrive where they would be available to Onenote for Mac. I don't own a PC. It also worries me when a member of a development team makes statements like "So if you're not concerned with syncing data to the cloud, how are you prevented from using OneNote?" in the face of many examples. It indicates quite strongly that they don't understand how their users work. That to me is a problem.

Hi,

I'm trying to understand the scenario here, so please correct my understanding.

OneNote sync's everything up/down with OneDrive. Once you have created a notebook, then you do not need network connectivity to add/edit/delete content, since all the data is stored locally in a cache file. Once you get connected again to OneDrive, it sync's all your changes to your OneDrive notebook, which would then sync all the content to any other device that is connected to that notebook.

So if you're not concerned with syncing data to the cloud, how are you prevented from using OneNote?

Yes it is different than having a .one file, which Windows OneNote uses, but still allows you to have use OneNote without network connectivity.

Thanks,

Chris

OneNote team

Chris:

Here is the situation that you and the other employees of Microsoft seem to be missing (though I must admit to being befuddled by your confusion as to why people are requesting this simple fix).

Many people work in industries that requires private information to be kept private, for many different reasons.  For example, I am an attorney.  I want to use MS One Note to help me organize and keep track of my cases.  However, in these notebooks, I will need to keep a *lot* of private information about my clients as well as private and confidential information about my cases.  ALL of this information MUST be protected from inadvertent disclosure due to the ethics requirements of my bar, not to mention privacy regulations that govern my practice as I am a government lawyer.

Requiring me to store these files on a "cloud" server, owned by a third-party company, that I DO NOT control and for which I CANNOT prevent unauthorized access by well-meaning, or even malicious, employees of that third-party company is plainly unacceptable.  System administrators would have access to my files with this private, privileged information.  Anyone with authority to order system administrators to access my data would have access to my files with this private, privileged information.  This means that I CANNOT store my OneNote notebooks in the cloud.  Period, full stop.

Not having the ability to create local-only notebooks that I can move around myself from one computer to another, as well as to a portable device such as a tablet, is a show-stopper for me and for ANYONE in my line of work.  There are also many other people in other industries who are similarly restricted and legally required to prevent the inadvertent disclosure of privileged information for which we CAN LOSE OUR LICENSE and our LIVELIHOOD if these data are disclosed improperly.

To drive this point home even more, would Microsoft use a software version control system that required it to store its proprietary source code for the Windows OS and the Microsoft Office application suite on a third-party server that Microsoft did not control and to which Microsoft could not prevent unauthorized access to its data?  I think that the answer is clear: NO, Microsoft would NEVER consent to that.  Similarly, neither I nor anyone else similarly situated can consent to that.

OneNote is a fantastic way to organize information and is a tool for lawyers that can be of great benefit.  However, in its current form (i.e., ALL notebooks must be store on Microsoft's OneDrive cloud without any option to store them locally and NOT synced to the cloud), it is completely unusable by me and the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of other professionals in the same situation as I am.

Please rectify this situation as soon as possible.  If that means making an add-on we have to purchase, then so be it.  However, this needs to be fixed, period, full-stop.

Having been a software developer myself, I cannot believe that it would take more than a few man-hours to rectify this fatal flaw.  This is certainly true, given how easy local file access is and how long-standing the ability to work with local files is, especially compared with the relative newness of a integrated "cloud" storage access and the difficulty of managing syncing the notebooks in an intermittently connected and disconnected environment.

Thank you for your attention.  I look forward to this being fixed.

Sincerely yours,

Jason