Microsoft’s new tool makes it easy for Evernote users to switch to OneNote

Over they last few years, Microsoft has worked to transition OneNote from its initial lecture-hall focus into more of a note-taking app for your everyday needs. It’s latest move: pulling users away from competitor Evernote.

To do so, Microsoft is releasing its first ever official importer tool for OneNote, which the company claims can migrate all of your Evernote content into OneNote. Once you import them to your desktop, those notes will sync across OneNote on all your devices.

To import the notes, you’ll need to either have Evernote for Windows installed, or manually export your notes from Evernote on the Web. You can also your Evernote tags to help organize your notebooks in OneNote.

Somewhat ironically, you don’t even need to have OneNote itself installed; the company will do that automatically for you if you don’t have it on your PC.

The tool is only available for the Windows version of OneNote at the moment, but the company says it will be available for Mac ‘in the coming months.’

OneNote is a fair bit more powerful than Evernote, especially on the desktop, so we can see some users making the transition. It’s main benefit are the free-form note pages – you can write anywhere you want, including handwritten notes, voice clips, images and video. Notebooks can also be divided into into sections and pages, giving you an extra layer of organization.

That said, not everyone needs more power in a note-taking app, and collaboration is a fair bit simpler through Evernote – especially with its Work Chat messaging feature.

Still, if you’ve ever though of making the transition, this will make it a whole lot easier to at least give OneNote a try. And that’s exactly what Microsoft wants.

➤ Make the move from Evernote to OneNote today [Office Blogs]| Import notes from Evernote into OneNote [Office Support]