Windows 10 OneNote app sucks.

It's all about the money and making things easier for Microsoft. Nobody behaves this stupidly without ulterior motives.

Good stuff on your outrage below -- we need all we can get!! :o) And I'm glad you enjoyed "toddler-level toy." :o) What also infuriates me is that they could have just left OneNote exactly as it is on the 2016 version and never touch it again -- and that wouldn't bother me one bit. Why on Earth would you screw over your OneNote loyalists to push this piece of junk -- when they could do whatever they want with the app and just leave OneNote alone?? It's maddening in the extreme -- that they built one of the best tools ever created, and they throw it all away for this pi$$-poor OneNote knockoff.

Have you ever read this piece below? It's from the previous project manager over OneNote (to my knowledge, anyway).

It's a masterpiece of self-delusion -- as it has absolutely no bearing on reality: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/The-best-version-of-OneNote-on-Windows/ba-p/183974

I too enjoyed the "toddler level toy" characterization of OneNote.

OneNote UWP is completely in line with the carpy design of most UWP <cr>applets. Look at what they have been doing with the "settings" dialogs that "replaced" the control panel apps. Every one is dumbed down. But not to the amazing bad extent that OneNote has been degraded in this putative "upgrade".

Personally I suspect that someone at MS won a bet on how bad an app they can get away with shipping. I too hope that a bunch of people lost their jobs for doing this. But I doubt it.

HA! First off, thanks for the laugh -- I enjoyed that!! :o) Secondly, sorry about that -- though I'm sure you get the idea behind the reference. ;o) Thirdly, thanks for your thoughts on "toddler-level toy" -- but I can only take credit for the "toy" part. In one of these OneNote posts (this exchange or another) -- I saw someone use "toddler-level" and thought it was BRILLIANT, so I thanked him and I've been borrowing it ever since. ;o)

Speaking of borrowing, I doubt that there's anyone who's been hammering Microsoft on this to the degree that I have -- and I'm nowhere near done. If I had the time, I'd go out to Redmond and protest outside their headquarters. ;o) But since I can't do that, I've got another plan in mind. I hate Twitter but I have used it here and there -- including sending Tweets to Microsoft people (with screenshots from these posts). To make that process more efficient, I'm going to take screenshots of every single post on this issue (and there are several threads -- so I've got plenty of work from). And I'm going to develop and application that loops through the screenshots files and randomly sends Tweets to as many Microsoft employees that I can find. It's not going to be every day or anything -- just here and there to keep reminding them of this madness. And besides, even if it doesn't make any difference (and it's highly unlikely that it will), it's good development practice for stuff I'm studying. So I can't lose. ;o)

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and outrage at this. :o)

P.S. This is what started it all for me -- when I did a search last year for the exact words of "I hate Windows 10 OneNote" -- and was DELIGHTED to find that some lady started a post with exactly those words. :o)

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice\_onenote-mso\_win10-mso\_365hp/i-hate-windows-10-onenote/6f0d508d-7ff0-43e4-b1ed-f730fa78f41d?messageId=ff27c674-8c10-44e2-b69c-647b48a6acb4&page=1

Hey! I'm an accountant, don't lump me in w/the idiots that designed the new app! I'm much smarter than that! =)

Love the "Windows 10 toddler-level", it really is a toddler version of One Note, so ridiculous. 

"stripped this great tool, slapped the sappy 2019 look and then tried to pan this off as the future improved."

Nicely done! Indeed, it is an abomination in software design -- and there is no measure for my disgust in Microsoft's stupidity on this matter. Have you ever seen this -- this guy was a OneNote product manager and wrote this about Windows 10 OneNote. It's just absolute BS and has no bearing on reality in any dimension.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/The-best-version-of-OneNote-on-Windows/ba-p/183974

I too have been a long time OneNote user since it's inception. The tool got better and better with each version release and then, BOOM...MS stripped this great tool, slapped the sappy 2019 look and then tried to pan this off as the future improved.

The search function sucks. You do a search, click back into the search field and the text won't clear when I type my next word. I have to do a special workaround...a WORKAROUND FOR THE SEARCH BOX TO WORK LIKE IT DOES IN ONENOTE 2016!

Please fix this issue Microsoft. This release of OneNote does not suffice.

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.