At the top, you'll find the familiar Office-style menu with all the controls. From there, you can add new pages, sections, or switch between notebooks. When you open the desktop app, you land on the last page you were working on. OneNote has a similar user experience to other Office apps, so it's easy and intuitive to pick up if you're used to that software suite. It follows the same logic of physical notebooks: add new notes, place them inside a notebook, and then separate those notes into sections. If you're just getting started in the world of note taking, it's a solid choice to begin with. Chances are it's already installed on your Windows PC, eager to burst out of your Start menu. People don't tend to talk about OneNote, but they should: it's really powerful for taking notes and keeping them organized. When you think of Microsoft Office, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel usually steal the show.

OneNote is for beginners Notion is for tinkerers ⭐⭐⭐ Share notes with others real-time collaboration and attach notebook to a meeting link are available, but no comments or mentions ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Workspaces bring your team together comments and mentions are available to enable collaboration ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Captures images and text, page selections, videos, and PDF files online or offline ⭐⭐⭐ Simple web clipper captures images and text from a page ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ All core features are free, but cloud storage is limited to 5GB via OneDrive ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Monthly subscription model very generous free plan with limited file upload limit ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Notes and notebooks are flexible enough but impose linearity, which may be limiting in the long run

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ You can build your own note-taking framework with Notion databases and views

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Multiple content types flexible note layout ⭐⭐⭐ Not many content types available natively structured layout approach ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Follows the traditional notes and notebooks structure, making it very easy to pick up and use ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Easy to use, but there's so much freedom, it may be confusing for beginners

Onenote organization tips