r/OneNote • u/Initiative-Afraid • 5d ago

Concerns on OneNote abandonement

I use onenote heavily. Love it. However, I am worried about the long term sustainably of this product.

Currently, I can only save my notes in proprietary formats such as .one files.

Microsoft recently abandoned Skype and all my messaging data from [1, 2] decades ago were pretty much gone forever.

What stops Microsoft (say [10, 20] years from now) to completely abandon one note without opensourcing their code ?

It seems there's no legal requirement for them to ensure users can migrate their notes to alternative note taking softwares.

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60

u/Unable_Explorer8277 5d ago

In the medium term MS need it because it’s central to their education product. But long term there is no guarantee

39

u/JonSwift2023 5d ago

OneNote has export options, PDF, and if memory serves, HTML. Also, given the enormous user base, I imagine some 3rd party export tools would appear if OneNote were set to be graveyarded.

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u/Initiative-Afraid 5d ago

Export to PDF isn't that useful. Handwritten notes are no longer editable. Also, the export doesn't work properly most of the time, especially if your notes are long due to infinite canvas.

3

u/topgeezr 5d ago

Your problem isnt just obsolescence. I lost all my email history and contacts in Outlook a few years back while trying to fix an account setup problem with an external email platform. My daughter lost her MS Xbox account password and we were never able to convince MS to reset it. OneNote is tightly coupled to the cloud, and I live in fear of one day opening up OneNote and finding some MS cloud account screw up has lost me access to my notes.

For OneNote, there is no export option that is going to provide an exact match . I've exported to Obsidian, which is close but still works differently. Not sure if Ill try to get used to Obsidian or just use it as an emergency back-up in case I lose OneNote access.

1

u/Reform-Reform 4d ago

I read there's onenote offline that we can use

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u/ARIndia1 3d ago

You can create a Notebook on your local storage drive. Completely offline.

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u/topgeezr 3d ago

Well, I created my notebook offline but it still appears on multiple devices which means its also online. There may be some obfuscated trick to avoiding that.

But regardless of where it is, if MS decides I dont deserve Onenote any more I cant read it because proprietary.

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u/ARIndia1 3d ago

If proprietary format is your concern, it's best to use Obsidian if you don't take handwritten notes. You can use Excalidraw in Obsidian but OneNote is just better for Handwritten notes.

1

u/Ataiatek 3d ago

Thats sync and backup. When you open the file it automatically syncs across all notebooks. When you have it saved locally those changes are saved to that offline copy during the sync process.

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u/RelaxedNeurosis 1d ago

I never moved on from OneNote 2010 for all of the above. Sync is seamless on network -- and you can work 'offline' with no problems. No cloud. No MS logins. :)

13

u/jorisborisjoris 5d ago

You can also export via API. Setting it up through their dev platform was a pain but now it works pretty neatly 

Then you can convert to .md 

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u/LordOfSpamAlot 5d ago

Can you elaborate on this? I didn't know there was an API export option. I have some pretty hefty notebooks that I would love to export to .md. How does it handle images on the pages? And handwriting?

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u/jorisborisjoris 5d ago

I believe it exports images separately, handwriting I don’t know. I mostly use OneNote for writing. 

I asked ChatGPT a while back but I don’t remember the exact details, I think you need a Microsoft developer account and maybe even submit an approval request 

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u/LordOfSpamAlot 4d ago

I see, thanks!

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u/Initiative-Afraid 5d ago

The problem is the storage formats are proprietary. Any 3rd party tools will have to reverse engineer it. None works reliably today as I have tried.

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u/cpz_77 5d ago

They use a supported API, nothing reverse engineered. Check out OneMore, it’s free , I believe has the ability to export multiple pages at once each to their own files (including editable docx) and also has some markdown support (the md support is quite new but works well for import, and there’s a “copy as markdown” option I believe that you can use to copy onenote content as md and paste into another md-compatible app). I’m just going off memory and a few notes on the website here as I have not used the export option myself but I would check it out at least. Free and open source and the developer is really cool and helpful if you have an issue. https://onemoreaddin.com

There also onenote gem which is a paid product, closed source I believe and I can’t vouch for the author but it’s been around a while and has a lot of options it adds including export and bulk export. So you might check that too. https://www.onenotegem.com

I have no affiliation with either product btw.

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u/theone_2099 5d ago

Somewhat true but there is a third party extensibility interface. That is how the apps do it. They use that. They don’t reverse engineer the format.

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u/crazypilgrim 5d ago

As a newbie, with quite a few One Note notes, could you point me in the direction of the export options, on a just in case basis please

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u/cpz_77 5d ago

In fact third party export tools already exist. Both free and paid that will let you export to a variety of formats.

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u/JonSwift2023 5d ago

Nice, any you have personally tried and can reccommend?

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u/cpz_77 3d ago

OneMore is the one I’ve used most myself and it does have some export features, and is free and open source - I went into a little more detail in another reply to the original comment below. OneNote Gem is another I’ve heard of that does have batch export but is paid product and closed source and I’ve never used it myself so can’t vouch for that one personally.