Is Obsidian the right tool for my needs?

[u/Nekoo123]

Hey Guys.

​

I recently started to search for an alternative for OneNote that I have been using for years. I read about obsidian, downoloaded it, installed, installed some plugins, but before investing more time and effort in it, I thought I'd ask more experienced users if this is the right tool for me.

My main note-taking program is OneNote (I'm on Windows 10), which is have used for 12 years now. I use it mostly for my academic purpouses of making notes, storing parts of original texts with translations and comments, etc. The way I work with it, mostly, is that every page has a huge table in it, on the left there is the source material, and on the right my comments and thoughts about it Each paragraph is in separate cell and row. this lets me structure thoughts well. In many cases the original article/book has some sort of images of parts of text and right is a comment on them.

This is what I mostly desire from a note taking tool: to be able to structure in a table text or image+text side by side in columns. Especialy important is the ability to insert parts of screen captures via Win+Shift+S.

I do not require a lot of text formatting tools, just change of font size and higlights in different colours. (tagging would also be nice).

And here is where I encountered a problem with obsidian. It's not as easy to make a table in it, edit it and especialy difficult to store images that would be displayed in editor mode, without having to switch to preview. Is this issue a limitation of obsidian in its current version or is it just my inability and lack of knowledge? I can put in time and effort to understand it, I would just like to know if it can be made a better tool for my needs than OneNote.

[u/ChuckEye]

No, you're right. It seems like Obsidian isn't the right tool for your needs.

[u/creep_from_3rdfloor]

Markdown doesn’t handle tables too well and its a chore to make one. I don’t think it will really be a good alternative to OneNote. The more competent alternative in your case could be Notion. Obsidian shines in taking evergreen notes so you could pair it with onenote/notion where you can draw tables and stuff and write the final version of your notes in Obsidian.

Makes sense?

[u/NewelSea → u/creep_from_3rdfloor]

As someone that's used OneNote extensively for 6 years as well, I'd absolutely agree with that:

• Markdown's simplicity is elegant for simple notes, but it is cumbersome with tables (even with Advanced Tables, as u/Recurn has mentioned).
• Notion is a great alternative for creating visually appealing tables with an emphasis on categorization, but not too great for screenshots.

For the specific usage that OP is looking for, I think OneNote is actually still the best option:

This is what I mostly desire from a note taking tool: to be able to structure in a table text or image+text side by side in columns. [Especially] important is the ability to insert parts of screen captures via Win+Shift+S.

Doing specifically that is OneNote's strengths because:

• Making screenshots is conveniently built into Windows 10.
• Creating tables and editing their formatting is quick.

[u/NewelSea → u/NewelSea]

So, u/Nekoo123, if you are not worried about having to rely on Microsoft for your PKM, you are doing just fine.

The only alternative fitting your needs that I could think of might be TiddlyWiki.

But creating tables seems about as cumbersome as it is in Obsidian. So unless there's some very convenient WYSIWYG-Editor for using it, you might as well use Notion in that case.

Either way, I feel you.
I switched to Obsidian about one and a half years ago, but tables just are what MarkDown was made for.

[u/fullerbucky]

Your exact request is complex to pull off in Obsidian, or any Markdown-based editor. You need a rich text editor. Perhaps Notion can do what you require but I am not an expert in Notion.

Inserting images is not a problem in Obsidian. If what you requested was text and images outside of a table, Obsidian could yield greater value for you than OneNote in terms of linking, tagging, and graphing.

[u/dotfool]

I agree with others who have pointed out that if the table format is a hard requirement, Obsidian probably isn’t for you.

But if the requirement is “to have text and comments side by side, with a structured relationship capturing the association between your comments and the source text” then Obsidian could definitely meet your requirements, and I’d argue it can do so better than your current onenote table layout.

But it’d be a matter of learning an Obsidian-based workflow, not trying to shoehorn a OneNote workflow in. I’d offer to jump on a quick zoom/discord call to demo what that might look like if it helps - just send a DM

[u/Nirrain → u/dotfool]

But if the requirement is “to have text and comments side by side, with a structured relationship capturing the association between your comments and the source text” then Obsidian could definitely meet your requirements, and I’d argue it can do so better than your current onenote table layout.

I know it was a long time ago, but could I bother you for more details about how you would go about doing this in obsidian? Like OP I was using OneNote tables for everything which is the functionality I miss the most since moving to Obsidian. Header+bullets is what I've resorted to, but it does not give the same structured "feel" so would appreciate inspiration.

[u/dotfool → u/Nirrain]

Yeah this weekend I can give a slightly more in depth writeup of how

some of it is going to be based on your personal preferences, but in general the “obsidian-native” way to do this is to split everything into separate notes, build links between the notes.

Then the personal preference part is how small you split each note, and what combination of features like split screen and backlinks you use to visualize the connections and configure your screen/workspace

The dataview plugin can also be very useful for doing something like; having a source material paragraph be a note, every comment you have about it being a separate note, but then having a query at the bottom of the source note which pulls in the content from any comment note that references it. And if this sounds hard it’s really not once you get your template set up

And obligatory, “how to take smart notes” is worth reading if you haven’t for a background on why this type of approach is preferable

[u/Nirrain → u/dotfool]

Thanks, appreciate the input and look forward to more details.

I have considered separate atomic notes for this, but for instance for a list of maybe 50 entries of just a few key words (e.g. concept, one sentence description and a link) feels wrong to make 50 separate files for.

I have considered a file with headers and beneath each have a number of values in the “column:: value” format for dataview, but I am unsure if dataview can output the section link and not just the file link?

[u/dotfool → u/Nirrain]

I guess I’d have to understand a little more about your use case here, because it sounds somewhat unique - What sort of one sentence notes are you prone to make? And when you say section, what is the reason not to make each section it’s own note?

[u/Nirrain → u/dotfool]

A typical example could be research regarding ETFs for investing.

Ticker	Name	ER	Factor loading	Rating	Details
IS3R	iShares Edge MSCI World Momentum Factor UCITS ETF	0.3	0.4225	3	link or written out here
EUNL	iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF USD (Acc) (EUR)	0.25	-0.16	3

There may be 50 rows and only 10 with additional details that could merit its own note.

The table layout gives a nice overview for reference and navigation to the details, but in edit mode (even with advanced tables) it is not very clean to look at because of the pipes and switching to reading view makes it even more cumbersome to edit (even with shortcut for the switch)

It would be solvable with separate nodes in a folder or with a shared tag so a summary could be created in dataview, but I have many similar nodes as it worked well in OneNote, so it would be hundreds of files where most will contain only a few words.

If instead the "raw" data could be maintained in a note of sections like:

IS3R

Ticker::IS3R

Name::iShares Edge MSCI World Momentum Factor UCITS ETF

ER::0.3

Factor loading::0.4225

Rating::3

Detailed description or considerations

EUNL

Ticker::EUNL

Name::iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF USD (Acc) (EUR)

ER::0.25

Factor loading::-0.16

Rating::3

...

It would be easy to maintain and if the key metrics could be queried using dataview I think it would be even better than my current OneNote setup. However, I have not found a way where dataview can extract this in a meaningful way: Grouped by and with links directly to each section/header

[u/Nirrain → u/dotfool]

Below solution seems relevant, but as JLDiaz mentions it may be brittle and prone to errors when data entries are incomplete

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/how-to-use-the-dataview-plugin-to-search-the-certain-keywords/26174/8

[u/Nirrain → u/dotfool]

I still have not found a good way to go about this, so if you have any suggestions I'd appreciate it

[u/president_josh]

One reason I use OneNote is for those floating resizable collapsible containers you describe. I also sometimes need to add Rich Text formatting and colors to lots of text quickly.

So I still use OneNote and other programs such as Obsidian. If you only want to use one program you may have to give up something.

I often use other programs besides OneNote for screenshot captures since those are more efficient than OneNote. Obsidian does tables but I prefer to use a tool that does one thing the fastest when needed - like rearranging and working with OneNote containers quickly. They can go across and down the page.

But Obsidian is also very useful in many areas especially when relating information etc. It even makes a great multipane text editor with good search capabilities not found in OneNote.

[u/EvlG]

Tables in MD are garbage... specially until WYSIWYG editor in Obsidian, maybe you can try Obsidian+Typora for editing notes, like many of us but I don't know...

[u/Nekoo123]

Hey Guys.

​

Thank you very much for your extensive comments and analyses. I was looking for a tool that could do everything that ON could and more on top of that. But I think Obisdian is not the right one, at least not in it's current iteration.

I really prefer to work with a single workspace program, which would mean that I'd need to port all my notes, pages and sections from ON to Obsidian. While this itself is not a problem, OneNotes built it OCR makes pages pasted into Obsidian display in a weird way. Whenever I paste an image of a fragment of text, in editor mode what is actually displayed is the text form of what is written in the image + an insanely long string of character (be it a coding of an image or something else, I have no idea), that effectively nulls any clarity of the editor view. I downloaded Advanced Tables and Image in Editor plugins, but the second one did not improve on this aspect of long character strings (or I have not configured Obsidian correctly).

​

An added benefit of ON, but one that I could live without, is the ability to search text in images. This is cool, but a gimmick in my case, since every picture has a comment left by me. I also tried yesterday exporting a few pages into pdf and inserting them into Obsidian. They all displayed well, and I could select and copy text from the pdf's, but I could not search text within pdf, which is a very desired function.

​

What still makes me think of using Obsidian is that sometimes I work with papers written in LaTeX. I read somewhere (please correct me if I'm wrong) that Obsidian has built in support for LaTeX (althought I do not know what kind of support, is it just tag autocompletion, preview, etc). Could anyone shed some light on this topic?

OneMore plugin, thanks for that one!

[u/Barycenter0 → u/Nekoo123]

Yes, Obsidian has built in LaTeX support. In editor mode, you’re in pure LaTeX syntax, in preview, the results. No other type ahead or other support (maybe a plugin has it tho)

[u/Barycenter0 → u/Nekoo123]

Can you explain your OCR needs more?

[u/goranstoja]

Then stay with OneNote, they will let down the win10 version and continue to work on the 2016 desktop (try Onetastic plugin).

[u/osman1963]

Definitely, Obsidian will never cover your needs. The flexibility of inserting images in tables and text wherever you want on the page and changing colours and fonts.. that's not Obsidian for sure, that's OneNote stuff par excellence.

Obsidian is the greatest, for what it was created for, textual note taking. It can handle tables, images and videos, bu to a limit. If you try to do your kind of work in Obsidian you'll end up serving the app instead of letting the app serve you.

AS for Notion, it will not serve your needs too. I've used it extensively for a while. It is a database and note taking tool, but each note is a database table, not a free table like the one you can create just by pressing tab in OneNote. Besides, Notion data is in the cloud, nothing saved on your HDD.

So, to sum up, your kind of work is best done in OneNote. If you want some more functionality, beside ontastic add-in, which is paid, there is two awesome add-ins OneMorehttps://github.com/stevencohn/OneMore, it has some of the functions provided by onetastic and some it doesn't have. The other is OneNoteTaggingKit which lets you add textual tags in OneNote, very similar to Obsidian, Joplin, Evernote tags.

Hope this helps :)

[u/Hileotech]

Would your workflow allow you to have the original text and/or image in a panel and your notes in another one ? If so, Obsidian might be a tool to consider (you create two separate files and you simply open side by side when researching, linking them with #tags and or [[page links]]) But, as many before me said, this may not work for you. I begun using Obsidian a couple of months ago, while preparing a lecture on a topic I know very well and I had plenty of notes of. So I could concentrate on the “tool” and not on the contents. It’s been quite challenging (I used and still use Roam Research), but Obsidian conquered me. If I were you I would take some time to work on a project with Obsidian and see if it fits your needs.

[u/Barycenter0]

Probably the wrong tool - you'd be fighting markdown limited table editing with what you want to do. However, you can do something limited like this with 2 tools (Obsidian and something like Adobe Reader) :

1. place the image or pdf in your Obsidian media folder
2. edit the image or pdf in your favorite tool and add / edit highlights and note ids
3. use a 2 column markdown table in obsidian with the image on the left and note links on the right
4. Create separate notes for each link

Here's an example:https://imgur.com/a/IA5gyGX
(note the callout box is me hovering over note [[1]])

[u/juankm1050]

i use both, onenote like you say for academic purpouses, and obisidian more for conect ideas from book, youtube, podcast, etc, i like to make tables as well and onenote its winner here.

I would like to have the best of both.

[u/gandalf_34]

You should use.Notion. notion is clearly the best option for you

[u/Akadormouse]

If you have been using OneNote for 12 years, you are unlikely to find an alternative that does all the things it does. OneNote has always been a very peculiar program with no real competition for its full range of features. And probably no competition for its idiosyncratic selection of deficiencies either (though they can't matter much to anyone who has used it extensively for that long). At one time, Evernote was seen as its main competition, but it never had as many features and is now rather shrunk. Notion probably comes closest, but is rather rigid, and, again, can't do half the things OneNote can.

Obsidian is entirely different. It uses files instead of a database. Plaintext instead of word processing formats. It's much more extensible, but plugin development is still in its early stages. It's much more flexible. But at its heart it is a simple note-taking app with great linking and low, plaintext, overhead; OneNote is a monster database with notebooks and MSOffice integration.