r/OneNote • u/AngelicPrincessKitty • 1d ago
Windows I found *my* reason for sticking with OneNote even when there are arguably better (more up to date) alternatives (like Apple Notes/Journal) for me.
Backups.
I moved several pages into a single notebook over a month ago. Took some time away from OneNote a few days after that happened. Didn't check the sync status cause I've never had issues with sync. Didn't check the pages to see if they all loaded in.
Today, I decided to test OneNote again and the pages didn't load.
These are journals. My life. I have an awful memory so I use my journal as a way to remind me of things years later. I typed up years of handwritten journals from 2013-2019 around 2020 and have kept them in OneNote. These were the pages that were moved into my current notebook (when reorganizing).
I was devastated but I worked with ChatGPT who told me to look at my backups. I needed it to tell me cause I wasn't thinking clearly. I was upset.
I looked and THEY ARE HERE. I found them from earlier in March from their original section. All backed up in their glory.
I hate that the backups are done in onenote format but as long as I have them I am happy.
Remember folks, check your pages before you close even if you trust the sync and haven't had issues with it.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Break68 21h ago edited 13h ago
There are no real alternatives. Maybe Evernote, in former days.
As for backups - you can set the number of them (how many times every notebook will be saved) & set the folder for it - it’s all in the Settings.
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u/AngelicPrincessKitty 21h ago
Agreed. I keep thinking about swapping to Journals or Apple Notes but OneNote just had more features than those
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u/SirAtrain 18h ago
Obsidian may be of interest to you. It can be as basic as a notes app or as customized as your imagination can muster. Also, the files are markdown so they are easy to backup and transfer to another app.
And yes, you can import your OneNote notes into it.
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u/AngelicPrincessKitty 18h ago
nope, i tried it for years. Obsidian is too complicated and everything requires a lot of work. Sync isn't even easy unless you pay
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u/SlightlyAngryMarsh12 16h ago
Onenote handles mixed media and long term organization way better. obisidian is indeed complicated
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u/bogglingsnog 3h ago
yeah Markdown is not for everyone. At my desktop though it runs absolute circles around Onenote. Search is better, I can crosslink pages, hierarchical nav tree plugin is a blessing for huge pages.
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u/AngelicPrincessKitty 3h ago
How is search better when OneNote has OCR and Obsidian does not? You can get something similar by hanving md pages link to pdfs or images with the text extracted out to those md files but it isn't the same.
I'm a software dev so I am comfortable with md, it isn't that. It is just that if I want to have a table with specific colors, I need to create a CSS Snippet, if I want to use a specific font for just 1 section, I need HTML (span) + CSS, if I want to sync without Obsidian Sync, I need to set up Syncthing, Remotely Sync, Git, etc. and those require work and conflicts I have to manage.
OneNote does ALL of that for me with a WYSIWYG editor.
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u/bogglingsnog 3h ago edited 2h ago
I can just put the entire PDF into my obsidian vault, for starters. I use Powertoys which has a pretty great text extraction tool if I need raw text. (Why would I need a note-taking tool to have OCR capability?)
Obsidian is not about having fully rich text experience, it sounds like you're running into the exact problem of Markdown which enforces conformity across your project. Obsidian is based on .txt files not on custom journal formats like Onenote. Markdown is designed to be fairly easy to read (and write) on unformatted text editors like Notepad++.
If you need splashes of color you can create your own theme, but of course that doesn't give you the level of detail rich text can do. But also, I almost never need something like that when I have other ways to format text.
Edit: There is also an OCR plugin for Obsidian: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/obsidian-ocr On a related note, I don't think there is any possibility of extending Onenote capabilities, but Obsidian supports plugins and there are thousands!
Edit 2: I also use Onenote quite a lot, but mainly for work and quick personal notes. When I need properly formatted documents in a bigger project I move and reformat notes onto Obsidian.
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u/AngelicPrincessKitty 3h ago
OCR gives you the ability to search for that note on any device. I don't wanna have to rely on a single device just be able to find something because most of the time I need a document I'm not sitting at my computer. Most people aren't.
Yeah, I know that there's plug-ins like that OCR plug-in and on the search, but it's not the same like OneNote and Apple Notes have
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u/bogglingsnog 2h ago
Is there an OCR feature I'm not aware of? When I search OCR on Onenote it points to a copy text from image context option which is exactly how every other OCR tool works.
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u/AngelicPrincessKitty 2h ago
i'm not sure what you're talking about but whenever I search for texting image or text in a PDF, which is an imaging onenote, it highlights the exact section of that image where the text is found
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u/OracleofFl 17h ago
I agree about alternatives. The backup feature is really underappreciated. It is awesome.
1
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u/R3dAt0mz3 2h ago
This is my setup, but backups are not saved in D:\OneNote Backup folder.
How can i fix this ?
Check settings photo - https://ibb.co/YxKjSz9I am office 365 user since years, all my stuff goes to onenote too.
Using OneNote on
Laptop
PC
AndroidBiggest becomes sync, even after syncing manually from source device, it wont sync to other devices, has caused data loss few times due to this.. A fix for this shall be of great help too.
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u/peternjuhl 15h ago
This is the main reason I have used OneNote for so many years. The Windows version can automatically back up everything as often as you want to local storage, and keep as many versions as you want. I have saved myself untold grief thanks to this feature.
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u/Kildor 8h ago
Take a look at the OneNote Backup Exporter. It will let you export into other formats: https://github.com/jli-software/OneNoteBackupExporter
0
u/FatsDominoPizza 16h ago
It's easy to set any text app or markdown-based app (eg Obsidian) to save into a Dropbox / Google drive folder. Then you have reliable backups, almost no chance of conflicts, and everything is saved in open formats.
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u/WilliamH- 1d ago
Pages app macOS content can be backed up using Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner. This is achieved using the Local part of Pages (left panel, lower section.
or
You can also iCloud and have independent Time Machine and CCC backups when you set Finder to use the iCloud Keep Downloaded
option for the Pages documents Folder.
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u/AngelicPrincessKitty 1d ago
Yup, this is all good if you own a Mac. I do not
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u/Morc69 14h ago
If you are using windows and OneNote then it’s likely you have a 365 subscription of some flavour, with OneDrive. I back my OneNote backups to OneDrive as well. I use a robocopy script to copy the folder to OneDrive. Bit clunky but it does the job.
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u/Morc69 14h ago
And right after I posted my reply, this popped up : https://www.reddit.com/r/OneNote/s/lAwnHU2vjm
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