Windows 10 OneNote app sucks.

Agree 100 %.  I have been using One Note since its inception.  There is a lot of personal content I NEVER want to store in the cloud.  When I recently updated to Office 365 Personal it installed the Windows 10 version of One Note.  I could no longer open or use my stored One Note folders without uploading them to One Note.  NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!  When will Microsoft understand people do not trust putting personal information in the cloud.  

MICROSOFT please listen to me.  Keep the desktop One Note alive and updated for those of us who do not store anything personal in the cloud and never will.  I have a personal server where I store all my content.  I do not need One Drive nor will I ever use it.  Millennials may flock to your new way of managing content but there are millions of users out there who still store their files locally where they are 100% safe from theft.

Please fix this.

Nobody makes decisions this dumb without ulterior motives. It's an abomination. The only reason there's not more outrage is because Microsoft blew it on marketing OneNote in the first place. Most people don't even know what OneNote is -- or they just didn't get it at first. The first time I saw it being used, the power of this tool was self-evident -- and it changed my life that day (both on a professional and personal level).

The only satisfaction I find is this is knowing that there are others out there who feel the same. I thought you'd appreciate this one below.

And on that note -- I'm regularly taking screenshots of these comments and sending them to the CEO at Microsoft (as well as Bill Gates and some others). I know it's an exercise in futility, but I have to try.

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Is it me or is the new OneNote for Windows 10 terrible?

First off, let me say that I very rarely post complaints on a public forum - This is one of the few exceptions as I feel particularly and personally wronged.  I have been a loyal OneNote fan for going on 10 years now.  A few months back when I got a new laptop I installed O365 for Windows 10 and my old OneNote 2016 desktop app had vanished and left me with something that looked like it was for middle schoolers.  Gone are the detailed menu bars, snappy sync (and if not snappy, at least able to troubleshoot effectively) and multi-media file support and easy search and navigation.

I have been sitting here, on a Sunday, trying to move content between sections, for hours.  The sync is unreliable, fails often or only syncs partially (Note that I am on a wired Internet connection).   I guess what I don't understand is why take an obviously powerful daily tool like OneNote 2016 and dumb it down to this garbage?  

Google is looking better and better.

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Microsoft are doing an absolutely abysmal job. In order to compete with Apple and Google, ba***rds are forcing customers to opt for nonsense applications across devices. Absolutely crappy decision and unnecessary decision making.

Microsoft are doing an absolutely abysmal job. In order to compete with Apple and Google, ba***rds are forcing customers to opt for nonsense applications across devices. Absolutely crappy decision and unnecessary decision making.

You made some great points there!

For whatever it's worth -- I am not letting this go. It's likely an exercise in futility, but I'm trying to get through to Microsoft in any way that I can (including sending the CEO and Bill Gates screenshots of all these comments, as the good bit I've written on it as well). Little by little (a Tweet here and there) -- maybe they'll get the message and wise up. Probably not -- but however little chance we have, we have no chance if we don't try.

I totally agree with Big Mike.   The things that the App doesn't do is waaaayyy too long to list and I used almost all of them on a regular basis.

I am continually amazed at the decision making within Microsoft.  Perhaps Microsoft didn't believe that there were enough users to justify continuing with the full OneNote version.  Who knows, but I believe that many people were starting to use OneNote desktop version because of how easy it was to use with Surface Pro and other touchscreen devices.  So after finally providing the best tools to take advantage of this brilliant piece of software and after people start using it they decide to take it away.  So disappointing.  Although this seems to be the way with Microsoft... 

• Microsoft Phone - Loved it now it is gone
• Microsoft watch - Great watch
• Microsoft Groove - Go get Spotify you will like it better than us
• So on and so forth

If anyone at Microsoft would like some free advice on how to better serve your best, longest, loyal customers please feel free to reach out to me.

dd

While I've lost some sleep and got overly-consumed by this lately -- I can't overstate how refreshing it is to just exchange concerns with someone who thinks things through.

What you wrote is irrefutable -- but argument is meaningless anymore. I didn't get angry at that video guy until I read all his commentary -- where I didn't see a single mention of the fact that they could still get OneNote 2016. When I challenged him on that, he claimed to have mentioned it many times (conveniently ignoring that it's not in the summary text that goes with the video, not once mentioned in replies to anyone, and to my knowledge -- not mentioned in the video either).

I don't doubt that he's mentioned in elsewhere -- but that doesn't count in the commentary where he didn't. Like here, there's a lot of upset people commenting on that video -- and most (if not all), have no idea that they can still get OneNote 2016. By replying to almost every person who wrote on there, he seems overly eager to promote that app. But that's not what bothers me -- what bothers is that he promoted it without mentioning that they had an option to still get OneNote 2016. Promote it all day long -- I don't care, but knew it was still available -- and obviously those people didn't know they could still get it.

If he's gonna take the time to reply -- how hard would it be to copy and paste a link along with it? And where's the link in the summary?

Call me cynical -- but that strikes me as someone with an angle. I'll admit that I was pretty hard on the guy (and apparently he banned me for it). ;o) But it's not that I'm fighting that guy as much as I'm battling a collective mindset of blankness -- that nothing you say registers with these people. Apparently he was unhappy with the app at first too, but now he's come around -- so naturally, because he did, the rest of us are just resistant to change. Never mind that the way he uses OneNote is not even in the same universe of what I do (and others on here). But does that matter? Of course not!

And did he say, "Hey, I'm gonna share your concerns with my contacts at Microsoft." Once again, of course not!

Sounds like you've been around the block. Nice to come across people with that old-school mentality of excellence -- who recognize reality!

Thanks again for your thoughts!!

I'm totally in sync with your opinion of "one size fits all". I've had to face variations of it since day 1 of my computing career. At my first employer senor IT managers thought a "programmer is a programmer is a programmer", that we were interchangable and could just be dropped into developing other applications and even into totally new languages.  Doesn't work that way.

I to have fought  the "one size fits all" plan for applications.   The user interface needed for a 5" "smart" phone touchscreen is not the same as what is appropriate on my i7 desktop computer with a 42" 4K monitor.  But MS keeps trying to sell us that tribble-bait.  They "improved" the QAT by spacing out the buttons to make it convenient for phat fingers on a touch screen, but cost us about 30% of the button space on our PC's.  MS dumbed down the icons color and content by "improving" them to SVG line drawings.  Fine for smartphones, not as good for PCs ...  it's frustrating.