You have a ton of apps and tools to choose from when it comes to taking notes and saving information. OneNote, however, stands out among note-taking apps for its incredible flexibility, colorful interface, and robust features. Over the last decade or so, I've tried dozens of note-taking apps and strategies—from using or to powerful tools like. I always come back to OneNote.

Comparing note-taking apps on your own is a pain, which is why Cloudwards.net has put together our very own Evernote vs OneNote showdown. Read on to find out each app's strengths and weaknesses. Today, we are excited to announce that we updated the design of OneNote for Windows 10, Mac, iOS, Android and on the web. Read more Note-taking made easier for everyone—redesigning OneNote May 17, 2017.

If you haven't given it a try yet, you might be about to discover your new favorite productivity tool. OneNote has been around for a dozen years as part of the Microsoft Office suite. Despite that, the app has long been probably in Microsoft's arsenal.

You can chalk that up to the software being a paid app limited to Windows up until a couple of years ago. That means many people have been missing out on what makes OneNote such an awesome, all-purpose tool not just for notes, but for capturing information of any kind. Feel too limited by simple notes apps and tend to think visually and non-linearly? You'll likely appreciate OneNote's freeform notes canvas, which lets you add any kind of content—including text, images, videos, tables, and files—anywhere on the page. Fond of scribbling on napkins or sketching out ideas?

OneNote's inking tools let you draw using your trackpad or mouse, as well as a stylus or your fingers if you use a tablet or touchscreen PC. Tend to collect a ton of research and want a way to easily organize it? OneNote was designed just for you, with features such as a web clipper, email-to-notes, and quick notes shortcuts, not to mention that intuitive notebook interface. It's the digital notebook that lets you take notes any way you want. In this OneNote tutorial, we'll teach you how to take your notes to the next level.

• • • • • • • OneNote Tutorial: Get to Know Notebooks, Sections, and Pages The first step to getting started with OneNote, naturally, is to go grab the free app at. OneNote is available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. There's also an online version and a Windows 10 App version that's more touch-friendly than the desktop version and also simpler. Each version differs from the others at least slightly in terms of features, with OneNote on Windows desktop packed with the most features. However, the essential ways you can use OneNote, such as how you organize notes, are the same no matter what device you're using.

Note: You'll need a Microsoft account to use OneNote since your notebooks and notes will be stored on Microsoft's free cloud service,. If you are an Office 365 subscriber, however, you can store your notebooks anywhere on your hard drive. Let's take a look at the interface. I took this screenshot with OneNote and then annotated it in OneNote. If you've ever used a spiral notebook or a binder for your notes—especially if you've used tabs to split pages into sections—using OneNote will be intuitive for you. The three main parts to OneNote are notebooks, sections, and pages. Notebooks let you collect related information in one central place, just like you would with a paper notebook.

For example, you could have separate notebooks for Home, School, and Work or make even more specific notebooks, such as Home Improvement Projects, Calculus 101, or Client Project X. Switch between notebooks using the dropdown arrow or, in the Windows version, keep your notebooks list open in a sidebar by clicking the dropdown arrow and then the pin icon. Sections help you group information in each notebook with colorful tabs running across the top of the app. For example, if you have a notebook for a specific project, you could create sections for each phase of the project or other criteria.

Each section holds one or more notes—which are fittingly called pages, to carry the notebook analogy further. Pro tip: OneNote gives you 16 colors to choose from for those section tabs. Set up a color scheme to organize your pages visually and consistently across your notebooks. For example, all money-related sections could be green, all creative-related sections purple, and so on. Sections can even be grouped together. That comes in handy when you have too many section tabs to fit on one screen. For example, if you had a meeting notes notebook with sections for each monthly meeting as well as quarterly and yearly review meetings, you could group all the monthly meetings into one section group.

Right-click on a section tab and select 'New section group,' then you can add sections to your new group. OneNote's unique because of its freeform pages. Image credit: Kathy Jacobs This freeform layout not only helps you create versatile notes with different kinds of content positioned exactly how you like, it aids in the creative and learning process. When taking notes during a meeting or class, for example, you can paste in reference material or questions to the side of the page. Kathy Jacobs, a former software tester and OneNote MVP, uses OneNote not just for notes but for writing precisely because OneNote doesn't force you to think linearly: I can add images and annotations in the article or to the side. Firefox for macs. I can mark changes, sources, and things to research right on the page. I find it easier to do what I need in OneNote than in Word.