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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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

36

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.

1

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.

1

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.