OneNote Missing Features

Julian Knight — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:31:45 +0000

Microsoft have announced the deprecation of the desktop version of OneNote. They claim that the Windows Store version is as good or better. But it really isn't! Here I try to list the missing features. I will update this post as things change.

Office 2019 (due for release late 2018) will no longer contain a desktop version of OneNote. Microsoft are telling everyone to move over to the Windows Store version (AKA “OneNote for Windows 10”), also seen in this blog post by William Devereux.

Microsoft claim that OneNote for Windows 10 is the only one now getting development other than fixes & that it is already “better” than the desktop version in “many” areas.

OneNote 2016 (the full desktop version) will continue to be available separately but will stop receiving any updates in 2020.

You can also keep track of what has been updated in OneNote for Windows 10 in the What’s New post.

However, there is a LOT missing from OneNote for Windows 10 - I’ve compiled this list in order to track what is missing and whether anything is done about it.

The marketing post by Microsoft “What’s the difference between OneNote and OneNote 2016?” gives Microsoft’s official view on which is best.

I’ve tried to be accurate but if you see anything wrong or anything missing, please leave a comment below.

Tell Microsoft what you want!

If you want Microsoft to fix some of these missing features:

Vote or raise feedback on the OneNote UserVoice site
Contact them directly if you are an enterprise customer. You should have access to a Technical Account Manager at least, possibly also an industry sector technical lead, and industry sector account manager.
Join the OneNote Group on LinkedIn
Try the UserVoice suggestions site
Take to Twitter, copy in @msonenote and William Devereux (@MasterDevwi)
Use the Give Feedback link and/or give feedback via Windows 10
Leave a review on the Windows store.

They do generally listen. They don’t always do what you want of course!

Missing Features

Revision History
- ~~No page versions view~~ Finally found this hidden under the RMB menu in the page list. Very poor UX though, to be fair, this option is in the same place in ON 2016. It’s just that isn’t the only place, it is also on the Ribbon.
- No recent edits view
- ~~No recycle bin view - to allow recovery of accidentally deleted items~~ Yes, this is present, just well hidden again. RMB over the notebook in the notebook list - which is probably normally hidden for you as it ends up taking up too much horizontal space.
UI/General Usability
- ~~No Insert Date/Time/Date & Time~~ You can, in fact, insert date and time. But don’t bother looking for something simple if you aren’t using a keyboard, it is only available via a keyboard shortcut. Insert Date = Alt+Shift+D, Insert Time = Alt+Shift+T, Insert Date & Time = Alt+Shift+F. Really not very helpful for mobile/tablet users!
- No symbol insert (Coming soon)
- No page templates - no way to create a boilerplate template - e.g. for meetings
- No custom ribbon or quick access toolbar - giving quick access to tools relevant to users workflows
- No way to change paste option after pasting
- No quick way to flip between notebooks without taking up half the screen. You have to click back to get to the list then select. On desktop, you can quickly switch between notebooks using a pop-over. The only alternative is perhaps to create separate tiles pinned to the start menu and then have multiple notebooks open at the same time.
- Inefficient use of screen space - all navigation is forced to the left-hand side of the screen. On desktop, notebooks can be in a drop-down and tabs go across the top, this is a lot more efficient.
- No way to change paragraph and line spacing - I find that the default text layout has too little white-space, especially between paragraphs. This makes large blocks of text difficult to read unless you manually include empty lines - which, in turn is not helpful if you later paste into other tools.
- No “Record Video” feature
- No control over audio recording quality
- No internal control over audio recording device selection - can only use the Windows default
- Uncertain whether recognise text in recordings is available or working
- No ability to move navigation sidebars to other side
- No floating new page button for note list so no way to create a new page in a chosen location without using the mouse/long-touch - which also changes the page
- ~~No way to turn off or correct auto capitalisation~~ - immensely annoying when using OneNote for keeping technical notes (e.g. Programming). UPDATE: OK, not quite true, you can turn it on/off in settings but you can’t turn it off temporarily - for a single instance - like you can in the desktop. (thanks to Albin, see the comments)
- Fewer size options for drawing pens
- Only limited example equations for insert
- Even less ability to automate than before
- ~~No way to set the language for text~~ - you have to change the input keyboard to the language you want before typing, a terrible experience for multi-lingual use. UPDATE: Also not quite true, you can select some text and right/long click then you get an option to change it. (again, thanks to Albin)
- No way to translate text (Coming soon)
Integration
- No integration with Outlook or other Office applications - you can only integrate with Outlook.com or O365 so if you have a different Exchange email service as your default, there is no integration.
- No Outlook task integration - I know some people use this extensively so that they get reminders in Outlook for expiring task dates
- Why does meeting integration to outlook.com/O365 require me to log in again? I’m already logged in.
- No integration with Office(?)
- No office autocorrect.
- No grammar checks
- No access to custom spell-check dictionaries
- No Thesaurus
- No docked note taking with linked notes
- No Very limited addins/extensions - not even from the Office Store
  
  Albin points out in the comments that this is not quite true. There is a version of the GEM addin for ON UWP. It is US$18 which may be too steep for some but it does add one or two useful things such as inserting a horizontal line and coloured code syntax. Mostly seems to make up for some of the issues listed here though. Uses a Windows menu overlay.
- No “Insert Excel Spreadsheet” or “Insert (Visio) Diagram”. UPDATE: According to Albin, this is coming in a future release.
- No way to access notebooks on local or network drives
- No way to export notes - e.g. to a .one file - even the Surface Hub lets you do this.
- No way to share just a page or a section, only the whole notebook
Tags
- No custom “tags” (on roadmap?)
- No text style tags
- No “Find Tags” feature
- No “Create Summary” feature, allowing tagged paragraphs from different pages/notebooks to be pulled together on a single page.
Search
- Much more limited search view - no visibility of “recent” ~~nor of the difference between search terms in titles vs page~~
  
  So it seems that the search results do differentiate between results in the title from the body. You wouldn’t be able to know this without reading the help though since the difference is that a search term found in a title is highlighted in bold+purple. Hmm, very intuitive - not.
- No pop-over - results limited to same width as current sidebar so a lot less usable unless you change the width - which you then want to change back afterwards
- No control over searching AV for words - can it even be done?
- You cannot search closed notebooks - I suppose this is because it now only supports OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online for storage.
- No search and replace. To be fair, this is a failing of ON 2016 as well.
Tables
- No convert to excel for tables
- No way to include/exclude heading row for table sort
- No way to create a table with a specified number of rows/columns (by number)
- No way to hide the borders of a table (Coming soon)
Security
- No notebook local backups
- No control over cache file location
- ~~No page password protection~~ Eventually found this under the RMB menu for a section. Poor discoverability.

Other Issues

Drag and drop from Outlook is SLOW, have to keep the mouse over OneNote with the LMB pressed for an appreciable amount of time

What do we get that is “Better”?

May start faster on many systems.
Insert an image from your PC’s webcam - use the intelligence of MS Lens to improve document and whiteboard captures.
More colours for the pens - pen colours may be retained when converting to text.
A ruler.
Marginally better touch/pen handling.
Dictation.
Stickers(!)
Pin to start - you can pin Notebooks, Sections and Pages to the start menu. You can also have a transparent start menu entry. Note that “recent” entries in the jump list don’t work properly on the UWP version and not at all on the desktop version.
Uses system “share” capability to more easily share notes to other apps and share info from other apps to OneNote.
Built-in accessibility checker - be kinder to colleagues with accessibility issues.
Use the Immersive Reader for focused reading and improved comprehension.
Some simple equations can be charted or “solved”. You aren’t always given an option to chart however - such as for the desktop app’s example “A=πr^2” equation. Make sure you use “x” and “y” as variables to get round this limitation.
Use the pen to take a note even if the PC is locked.
Use the Edge browser to ink over a web page and save to OneNote.
Use Cortana to add a note.
“Better” sync engine is “coming soon” - though honestly, we may have to take MS’s word for that at the moment. The current sync engine seems to be the best one MS have in my view. However, it does start to struggle on mobile devices if your notebook gets too large, especially with embedded files.

Updates

2018-07-31:

Updated the “better” list following the comment from @DragosStefan. Also added further entries to that list based on the Microsoft blog posts.
Cross referenced to MS Power User blog post.

2018-07-26:

Many thanks to Albin LABELLE who has provided some really useful updates. Do check out his OneNote blog, especially his Closing the Gap post, he is keeping an eye on changes there. He also has some great OneNote tweets.
Twitter link from OneNote Central

A long-time fan of the desktop version of #OneNote for Windows, IT pro Julian Knight is taking a closer look at where the current feature set of the OneNote for #Windows10 app stands compared to his favorite version. https://t.co/b0FUEQq4LA
by @knightnet pic.twitter.com/1GvNEAux8O
— MSEdu Central Marjolein Hoekstra (@MSEduCentral) July 26, 2018
Twitter question from @msonenote

What could we do to make it better? We're always open to feedback. 🙂
— Microsoft OneNote (@msonenote) July 26, 2018

2018-07-21:

Many thanks to Kjell for the comments via Disqus. I’ve updated the entries for the Recycle Bin and Insert date/time.

2018-07-19:

Updated the list after publishing today when I went through some other posts and through the OneNote for Windows UserVoice site
Blog post by William Devereux, OneNote product manager, who has been kindly communicating with me and the OneNote LinkedIn Group. Detailing some new updates (actual update on his Twitter feed).

Hey OneNote fans! We just released a new update on Windows 10 (version 16.0.10325.20049) with a number of features based directly on your feedback. As always these features are rolling out, so if you don't see one of them yet then check back soon. Here's what's new for everyone:
— William Devereux (@MasterDevwi) July 18, 2018

Office 365 Autosave

Julian Knight — Tue, 08 May 2018 10:20:16 +0000

I am sure that whoever in Microsoft came up with the idea of an autosave flag, they thought it was a great idea. And indeed it is. **However**, when they made it default to _on_, they made a logistical nightmare for the majority of users. This post discusses why and what you could do about it.

With autosave on by default, every shared document that you open in Word, Excel or PowerPoint is subject to the whims of the Office client software. This means that it is all too easy to accidentally make a change that is then autosaved changing a shared document, throwing out version control processes, possibly approvals, etc. To say nothing of annoying other colleagues with random changes.

When the “feature” was introduced at the start of 2017, Microsoft gave no way to change the default from on to off. By the middle of the year, however, they introduced a set of registry settings.

Somewhat inevitably for a poorly thought through feature, they compounded the issues by making these registry flags permanently disable autosave instead of allowing a change to default to off. :sigh:

Well, for what it’s worth, here are the registry codes you need to permanently disable autosave in the three client applications:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

You can save the above code to a text file ending in .reg. Then right-click on the file in Windows File Explorer and chose the merge option to turn off autosave.

If you want to undo the change, set the values to 0 instead of 1.

Macro to open a web URL from Outlook

Julian Knight — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 10:31:45 +0000

Many of us spend most of our work time in a few applications such as Outlook (email) and a web browser. This example macro for Microsoft Outlook will let you add a button to the Outlook Ribbon that will open a specific website URL.

To use this macro:

Open the VBA Editor window (ctrl-F11)
Double-click on Project1 > Microsoft Outlook Objects > ThisOutlookSession in the Project pane (top-left)
Paste the code below
Customise the Ribbon
Add a new Group (you can’t add your own entries to the standard groups)
Add the openGoogle macro (or whatever you’ve added), rename and change the icon if desired

Note: This version will only work for the 64-bit version of Microsoft Outlook. To use on the 32-bit version, remove the word PtrSafe.

Option Explicit

Private Declare PtrSafe Function ShellExecute _
 Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" ( _
 ByVal hWnd As Long, _
 ByVal Operation As String, _
 ByVal Filename As String, _
 Optional ByVal Parameters As String, _
 Optional ByVal Directory As String, _
 Optional ByVal WindowStyle As Long = vbMinimizedFocus _
 ) As Long

' WARINING: THIS MUST ONLY BE GIVEN SAFE URLs!
' DO NOT USE WITH DIRECT USER INPUT
Private Sub openUrl(url As String)
 Dim lSuccess As Long
 lSuccess = ShellExecute(0, "Open", url)
End Sub

Public Sub openGoogle()
 openUrl "https://google.com"
End Sub

Microsoft Office Hints and Tips on Much Ado About IT