One note to rule them all - Office onenote UWP and 2016 to merge

[williamcll]

If you have a copy of office after 2013 or 365 on windows 10, chances are you will find out that you somehow have two copies of onenote, one from the office suite and one from the windows store. That is soon to be change as according to a recent Microsoft ignite session, both version will soon to be merged with dark mode enabled.

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Microsoft gave OneNote 2016 a stay of execution earlier this week, revealing that it is extending support for the app to October of 2023. As it turns out, Microsoft has bigger plans for the OneNote desktop app, however. In an Ignite 2019 session today, Microsoft laid out plans for merging modern code and features back into the OneNote 2016 desktop app, which is a pivot in focus to begin operating under one codebase.

When it announced extended support for OneNote 2016, Microsoft said that a dark mode is also coming to the app. Beyond that, however, Microsoft plans to bring more modern features like @mentions and integration with Microsoft Search to the desktop app. There are also plans to integrate Microsoft To Do, which has already come to apps and services like Outlook and Microsoft Launcher on Android.

Notably, Microsoft previously continued to push the OneNote Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app over its traditional desktop counterpart as part of the Office suite. As part of this pivot, Microsoft is also shifting back to OneNote 2016 as the default version of the app that will be deployed and installed with Microsoft 365 subscriptions.

"We also want to make deployment and installation easier for organizations and individuals, so for Windows users, starting in March 2020, when you deploy or install Office 365 subscriptions that include the Office desktop apps or Office 2019, the OneNote desktop app will be installed by default alongside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint," Microsoft said in a blog post this week.

Where that leaves the UWP app is unclear, but we'll presumably see Microsoft flesh out its vision for OneNote in the coming months.

Updated November 7, 2019:A Microsoft engineer clarified the team's path in a Reddit post, stating the following:

Three years ago, we forked our code to work independently on 2016. We separated OneNote 2016 from our shared code base (the libraries that support android, UWP, IOS, Mac etc). Today, with our new strategy, we are taking that old branch that we deviated from, and bringing it back to accelerate our process shipping in all platforms.

This doesn't mean we are stopping to support clients, or merging clients. Win 10 is alive, Office OneNote is alive.

Source:https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/79266

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-merging-modern-features-back-onenote-2016

Thoughts: I used a like of Onenote back in my high school days, it wasn't that useful because I was awful at taking notes in the first place. Might try it again now.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

ok so they merged two different versions of the same app? 

[strajk-]

6 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

I still think onenote is one of those pieces of software that exists because someone at Microsoft was told to do something but couldn’t actually do anything productive. So they made a savable clipboard, made sure to go full spaghetti code about it, and in the end got a program that accomplished the same goals as the default notepad.

Onenote is great, calling it glorified notepad is incredibly disingenuous, in that case everything that can be written on is a glorified notepad. 

 

I work with a small team, and using it as a means of mindshare to document a list o internal documentation or guidelines was always been a godsend, the search function is great as well.

[Mihle]

OneNote 2016 is great. Not being able to save things locally where you want was the biggest dealbraker with OneNote UWP for me. Saving it locally means you dont need to use microsoft servers and you can use whatever cloud service you want.

[Arika]

I always forget that onenote exists

[LAwLz]

So in other words, they are going to axe the UWP version and continue with the regular version? 

[leadeater]

Isn't this old news? Office 2019 doesn't have OneNote and has been out for ages, Microsoft has a lot of support articles and FAQs explaining the situation and we removed OneNote for Office off all our computers to use the Windows 10 OneNote instead as there are features it can use with Office 365 that the OneNote Office version cannot do.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, strajk- said:

Onenote is great, calling it glorified notepad is incredibly disingenuous, in that case everything that can be written on is a glorified notepad. 

 

I work with a small team, and using it as a means of mindshare to document a list o internal documentation or guidelines was always been a godsend, the search function is great as well.

If you don't use it then it's hard to really understand what OneNote can actually do, it's not a note taking program with tabs/pages it's way more than that with heaps of capabilities to embed actual Word documents and other media content, plus a whole bunch of other stuff I have never used.

[captain_to_fire]

On 11/10/2019 at 5:56 AM, leadeater said:

Isn't this old news?

I think it is indeed old news. I have noticed that the x86 One Note has been replaced by the Windows Store version for months already way before the OP's post.

On 11/10/2019 at 5:59 AM, leadeater said:

it's not a note taking program with tabs/pages it's way more than that with heaps of capabilities to embed actual Word documents and other media content

I like the fact that I can insert a PDF file and do annotations, my only problem with One Note is that printing those notes result to broken pages because it doesn't allow me to set page size like in Word especially for me who prints documents from an iPad via an AirPrint compatible printer.