One Note App or Desktop?

[John Goodhind]

Should we now be encouraging teachers to use the One Note App as opposed to One Note 2016? It seems that new developments (eg: equations inking) are hitting the App before the desktop, and it made me wonder whether developments will in future target the app, and the 2016 version will be sidelined. (I also notice that in Teams notebook, the options to edit are 'in browser' or 'onenote' which is the app).This would present a problem for us as we have disabled the app from staff laptops owing to sign in problems that happened when the app was default. Microsoft have some previous on this- we only found out by chance that Office Professional Plus 2016 wasn't getting new features, and the whole school had to go over to 'Office 365 Proplus 2016'. 

[#2]

Good question, John. I've also noticed quite a few nice developments there. For me it is really like two separate programs that work with the same data file. As an interactive whiteboard replacement, the OneNote App seems better featured. When doing heavy lifting, I still prefer the OneNote Desktop. I think one should try out both and see which one works the best in the context e.g. which one comes more naturally to learners.

[#3]

 I'm thinking that I'm going to recommend the desktop app for the teachers to build their one note notebooks and the windows 10 app for students to use. The online version just doesn't cut it for me anymore. 

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Microsoft are indeed phasing out OneNote 2016 over time. They have created an FAQ about the fate of OneNote 2016 and the importance of OneNote app here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/frequently-asked-questions-about-onenote-in-office-2019-658...

[#5]

I loved being able to package a notebook and send it to a colleague. I created page templates in the OneNote 2016 notebook, could share standard content, and maintain consistent looks and feel this way. I think it will take longer than they think to migrate all of the features in OneNote 2016 to the OneNote for Windows app.  Look at how long it is taking MS to get the full Office feature set into Office online apps. I think they need to re-think their timeline. It is hard enough to keep folks from going to Google without these kind of Google decisions.