OneNote for the iPad (2022): complete review

Microsoft OneNote is a cross-platform note-taking and whiteboard app that works and syncs with Windows, Android, macOS, iPad, and iOS. Not many note-taking apps can sync across all platforms like that. Each of these operating systems has unique features that change your user experience. The app is free until you have used up the free 5 GB of OneDrive storage that comes with your Microsoft account. After that, you’ll need to pay for OneDrive because that is what the app uses to sync across devices. This review focuses on the iPad version of OneNote. 

Creating new notebooks

Creating a new notebook in OneNote is alright, though it can be simpler. You can then name your notebook and choose a colour for its icon. There is quite a decent variety, but from our experience, you’ll probably use only one colour. The name of the notebook is more important than the colour of its icon. But options are always good to have. The app tells where your notebook is located, which depends on the Microsoft account you’re using. The information feels unnecessary if we can’t interact with it or change it.

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Compared to other note-taking apps on the market, OneNote takes the longest to create new notebooks. Your notebook automatically gets a new section and page that you can both rename, but you can only change the colour of your section. OneNote is both a handwriting and text-based note-taking app. On the iPad, when using the Apple Pencil, handwriting makes more sense, so that is what we’ll first focus on. By default, the page template in the app is plain, but you can change it to use ruled and grid lines that have three line-spacing options each. You can also change the page colour to one of 16 options. We like the colours; they are light and perfect for a background colour.

OneNote’s infinite canvas has become popular over the years, with more note-taking apps adopting it. As long as you don’t intend to share your notes outside of your note-taking app, why limit yourself to a fixed page size, right? We would still argue, though, that for those rare occasions, perhaps we ought to at least have some fixed page sizes. What do you guys think? The pages in the app expand downward and sideways to the right, as long as you keep writing. It makes OneNote perfect for brainstorming and mind mapping; it could be an excellent alternative for those who dislike Apple Freeform.

The setup in OneNote does not allow for custom page templates. So, if you’re big on those, like we are, then this is not the app you want to use. We’re obviously sad that we can’t use our digital notebooks, but we’ll be fine.

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User interface

The user interface in Microsoft OneNote has dramatically improved since we last did a full review of the app a few years ago. We love the modern and minimalist look of the app. The left sidebar for your notebooks is great for quickly switching between notebooks, sections, and pages. You can bring it up when you need it and tuck it away for more space on the screen to work on your notes.

Pen tool

Ballpoint pens are not the greatest; at least for me, they are not. We were hoping to at least have more pen types in the app by now. Microsoft has added a dynamic pen setting that doesn’t seem to do much to the pen type. The only difference you’ll notice is in the pen thickness when you toggle its switch. But, effectively, the pen remains a ballpoint pen. The pen tool has six fixed pen sizes that start off too thin to become quite thick. The first three are usable for handwritten notes, but more pen thickness would give users a wider thickness range to work with. You then have basic and glittery colours for your pen. The glitter colours used to make the pen tool feel smoother than the plain colours, but in 2024, they feel the same.

You can use custom colours for your pen. Sliders are not the most accurate colour-picking tools, though. So, if you love using specific colours, you won’t like the option you have in Microsoft OneNote. Of all the options available, they just had to pick the worst. Custom colours are definitely a pain to use in OneNote. The bright side is that the handwriting experience in OneNote is good. Taking decent notes in the app shouldn’t be a problem.

Highlighter

The highlighter in OneNote goes behind your ink, so it does not dim your notes when you layer it. We also like how it doesn’t register overlaps of the same colour, but it can pick up those of different colours. It’s just a small detail that makes highlighting in the app a little bit more pleasant. Using a straight highlighter is not as pleasant, though. You have to keep reselecting the shapes tool to use the straight highlighter. The tool has five fixed sizes, one less than the pen tool.

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Favourite toolbar

The favourites toolbar in OneNote can house a maximum of thirteen pens and highlighters that you like using often. That is a decent number to work with. Let us know if thirteen colours are too few for you. Adjusting a tool once you’ve added it is quite easy. The favourites toolbar in OneNote is also the main toolbar for your writing tools. That means it lacks the mobility we’re used to seeing with favourite toolbars, but it’s quite functional.

Eraser

The eraser erases per stroke and per pixel. They’ve tried to make the pixel eraser smoother, but it is not quite there yet. There is some progress, though. It would help if the app had a way of letting us know which eraser we are using. We still can’t selectively erase the highlighter alone, which is disappointing in 2024. OneNote does not have size options for your eraser, and you won’t miss them.

Zoom tool

OneNote does not have a zoom tool. The app lets you zoom in directly on your pages, which we feel is better. However, the range for zooming your pages in the app is quite small. You can zoom out to lower than 25%, but only 200% for your maximum zoom in level. It’s better than nothing, but a wider range would be more helpful. At least the app displays the zoom percentage on the screen. It also has preset zoom levels for 100% and page width zoom levels. They are easily accessible, making it easy to revert back to the levels you use often.

Adding items to your notes

OneNote makes an excellent whiteboard app because of all the items you can add to it on the infinite canvas.

Text boxes

The text tool in OneNote used to be the best in a handwriting note-taking app, but that’s changed as more apps caught up to its features. Your text goes inside invisible text boxes, so it’s very easy to add them to any part of your notes. We were hoping to get some text box border options by now to make text boxes prettier. The app also still doesn’t rotate your text boxes, which makes them even more boring.

The app has a lot of fonts that you can use, but we’re surprised that it still doesn’t support custom fonts in 2024. The font size range is decent. You can make your text bold, italic, underline, or strikeout. OneNote also supports superscript and subscript, which are rare to find in a handwriting note-taking app. You can also change your font colour and even highlight it. You can’t use custom colours for your highlighter, but the ones available are quite decent.

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OneNote has three alignment options for your text. The app also has preset font styles for your headings, page title, citations, quotes, and code. We still can’t change them, or at least save custom text styles.

Lists

You can add numbered, unnumbered, and check lists to your notes. Like your text, they are contained inside text boxes. OneNote has six numbering types and nine for your bullet points. It makes lists pleasant to use, especially when you like adding levels to them. Checklists also support levels, but it seems OneNote hasn’t made a lot of significant updates in the past two years. The feature still doesn’t strike out completed items. It’s disappointing.

Tags

Apple Notes and Noteful have changed how tags work in handwriting note-taking apps. So the many tags in OneNote are not as exciting anymore. They are more fun than lists and help you add more details to your notes than simple notes. But, over the past few years, tags in note-taking apps have evolved to catalogue our notes. They are more interactive now, but we’re not sure how OneNote would bring that to the app. You can still use the tag in OneNote to mark items you may want to discuss later: a project idea, questions to ask, or simply a film you want to watch.

Sticky notes

Sticky notes in OneNote stick to the right side of your screen. They are great for noting items you don’t want to forget, which is handy if you’re juggling too many things. We love that you can even create them from your notes, in case you need to follow up on something. Your sticky notes can be one of six colours and contain text or images. The text in your sticky notes supports some basic formatting and simple text. Sticky notes also make it easy to add ideas to your notes without rewriting them. That’s probably the best way to use the feature. Let us know how you’re using sticky notes in OneNote.

Shapes tool

Does OneNote not support freehand-drawn shapes anymore? It feels like the iPad version of OneNote keeps getting worse; Microsoft is not even trying to improve it. The template shapes in the app are not great. They are limited to a few basic shapes, arrows, and cartesian planes. It doesn’t make for a great shapes tool, especially because now the app doesn’t even support the few irregular shapes we could draw before. Once drawn, you can’t adjust your shapes. You can only resize, stretch, and shrink them. You can change the colour of your shape, as well as its border thickness. Rotation is still limited to fixed angles that you can’t control. The shapes tool in OneNote is one of the worst you will see in a note-taking app. Shapes don’t support fill colour, and they are not fun to work with.

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Tables 

We are always happy to see tables because not many note-taking apps support them. Though adding tables is very simple, adding more rows and columns to the 2×2 table you create can be a massive pain. Tables support text input, with some basic formatting to make your text bold, italic, or underlined. Column width is variable, depending on how much you add to each column. You can also adjust them, with limited control over how the final table looks. Tables are very basic. But it is still better than not having any.

Photos

Adding single or multiple photos to your notes is fairly simple. You can add them from the Photos library, take some within the app, or search online for photos using Bing. We recommend cropping them when adding images from photos. before adding them to your notes because you won’t have that option afterwards. It is such an unpleasant setup. Why limit the cropping feature to one instance of the app? Most people think of cropping after we’ve added our photos and we’re trying to arrange them in relation to our notes. If the crop feature must be available at one point, it would be within the workspace. At this point, we’re simply fed up with OneNote on the iPad. It feels as if Microsoft is actively sabotaging the app, which is really uncool. We can’t help but wonder how the app works on Android.

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The office lens technology in OneNote enhances photos you take with your camera as whiteboards or documents, making them look like scanned images. Once in the app, you can treat the photos as you would any other image in the app.
Rotation is still limited to 90-degree calibration, which doesn’t leave much room for creativity. You can add alt text to your photos for better accessibility. Accessibility features are always welcome, and OneNote pays attention to that. The app can also copy your image to sticky notes if you want to look at it later. It would be more useful if the sticky note took you back to the photo when you tap on it, like an extraction from your notes that is hyperlinked. Lastly, you can lock your images, which embeds them in the writing canvas and prevents you from interacting with them in any way. We haven’t found a way to unlock them without undoing the change. Unless you really mean it, avoid setting your photos as background.

Audio recording

Audio recording that does not sync to your notes is useless in a note-taking app. We still can’t write or type notes while audio recording in OneNote. The app doesn’t even transcribe the recordings. There are so many ways we can interact with our notes in different apps, so simply recording audio is no longer enough.

Attach files

You can attach files to your notes in OneNote; PDFs, text files, word documents, PowerPoint, zipped files, etc. OneNote will attach any type of file like a file-management app. When it doesn’t support the file type, the app can’t show you a preview of it. It prompts you to open the file in another app instead. For the file formats supported in the app, OneNote previews them in a separate window. You can’t work on or edit them in the preview window. You can only view them. To work on them, you have to open them in a different app like opening a Word file in Microsoft Word or Pages, for example.

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It would be awesome to work on these files within the app. That way, we would use OneNote only and not need many apps for our workflows. Your file attachments can’t be bigger than 100 MB. This is enough for most documents but not videos, so it’s a bit limiting. OneNote supports videos, but the 100MB limit means you probably have to cut them into smaller chunks. 

With all your attachments, you can:

  • Cut, copy, and delete.
  • Preview them to see what information they contain, provided OneNote supports the file format. 
  • Rename
  • Add Alt Text

Insert links

You can insert web links in your notes. You can add or paste the URL and write a display name for it. It would be more useful if we could create hyperlinks connecting pages in OneNote. You can’t do much with your links; open, copy or edit them.

Math equations

OneNote can help you calculate simple math problems. The app doesn’t support any math equation languages. It is, therefore, best to keep your equations as simple as possible. For complex equations, you’re better off handwriting them in OneNote. This equation feature is not useful for Math students. 

Dates

You can insert dates into your notes to indicate when you created them. OneNote has no planning features, something you’d expect from an app that supports adding dates to your notes.

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Edit meeting details

You can import details of your meetings from Outlook into OneNote. It saves time by importing all your meeting details with one click. 

Researching in OneNote

According to Microsoft’s website, this feature is only available if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription. Researcher helps you search for topics on the internet without leaving the app. It is only available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese. When you search for a term, the app shows you some related topics you might want to explore. Your results are organised into books, journals and websites

You can only read short extracts of the articles within OneNote. For the full articles, you have to Open in Browser. You can also extract citations into your notes, this works best for journals. OneNote has a simple way to extract citations for your research papers. It doesn’t work for everyone. For complicated research work, you’ll need a different app.

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Lasso tool

The lasso tool in OneNote selects everything on the page. It can’t selectively pick up individual parts (handwriting only, images only, etc) of your notes. It lets you: 

  • Cut
  • Copy
  • Delete
  • Rotate 
  • Resize
  • Change the colour of your ink. You can selectively change the colour of your ink only and that of your highlighter. 
  • Change the thickness of your ink.

You can insert space between sections of your notes in OneNote. If you missed something or want to add some new information, simply create as much space as you need for it. You can add space horizontally sideways or vertically downwards.

iPadOS support

OneNote doesn’t support multiple instances. You can only split view the app with a different app. In 2020, opening only one page at a time in a note-taking app is not enough anymore. It also does not support Scribble. The good news, however, is that the app supports true dark mode. Your colours automatically switch when you move between light and dark mode. 

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OCR

OCR in OneNote is very unique. You can search through your handwriting, but you can’t convert it to text. Instead, the Immersive Reader reads out your notes. The app converts your notes to the text, disregarding their format. This feature works best for notes written in prose.

You can adjust the reading speed of your reading assistant and select a female or male voice. The female reader sounds more natural and much less robotic than the male one. You can change many settings to make your notes look the way you want in this reader: 

  • Text size
  • Increase spacing
  • Change your font from the three available options.
  • Choose a theme (how your notes look), for the best visual effect. 

The immersive reader can help you with your reading when you turn on Syllables. You can also learn the different parts of speech while reading, by highlighting nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The app lets you pick a different colour for each. You can also choose to Show labels. It is useful for learning a new language, most certainly. 

You can choose to focus on one, three or several sentences at a time as you follow your reading assistant. You can translate your notes too.

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Check accessibility 

OneNote can help you make your notebooks more accessible for people with disabilities. The app will identify: 

  • Errors
  • Warnings
  • Possible improvements by offering you some useful tips. 

PDF reading

OneNote doesn’t open big PDFs. For anything bigger than 100 MB, you will need a different PDF-reading app. However, OneNote has a unique approach to PDF reading, and many people will love it. 

To annotate your documents in OneNote, you have to embed them into your notes. The app doesn’t support hyperlinks in your PDF. Navigating through hundreds of pages is thus a painful experience in OneNote. We don’t advise it. You get the most out of the app when annotating a few pages at a time. This is the best way to read PDFs. Each page is separated from the rest of the PDF. You can:

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  • Move
  • Resize
  • Cut, copy and delete.
  • Rotate individual pages. 

Owing to the infinite canvas in OneNote, you can annotate your PDFs and add space between your pages (as much as you need). It makes OneNote ideal for studying short topics, but terrible for big ones as there is no fast way to navigate through pages in the app.

You can lock a page in place when you Set Picture as Background. It removes editing capabilities. Your page remains where it is on your canvas, locked in place to prevent accidentally changing it later. It happens a lot in OneNote with big pictures and PDF pages. You can also add your PDFs as an attachment without a printout. 

Exporting

You can collaborate on your notes in OneNote by inviting people via email or sharing the link to your notebook. For either collaborating option, you can decide whether or not people can edit your notes. 

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You can share your notes via email with Outlook or export them as a PDF to other apps. OneNote creates huge pages due to its infinite canvas. Exporting them to other apps is difficult as some pages might be too large to create readable PDFs. 

You can only export a page at a time. You can’t export sections or notebooks out of the app. Exporting pages out of a notebook one by one is a lot of work. 

Organisation

OneNote has three main levels of organisation; Notebooks, Sections and Pages. Your pages have an additional two hierarchy levels of Subpages. Under More Notebooks, you can add notebooks to your iPad from different OneDrive accounts. Once created, there’s not much you can do with a notebook in OneNote. You can only close it, which doesn’t delete it. It only removes it from the app on your device. You can also change the colour of your notebook.

For your sections, you can:

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  • Delete
  • Move to a different subject
  • Copy 
  • Rename Section 
  • Change Section Colour.  
  • Lock

PROS

  • Free
  • Available on most OS
  • Attach any file (less than 100 MB though)

CONS

  • Very buggy
  • No distinct page sizes on the iPad
  • Researcher is only available with Microsoft 365 subscription
  • No recycle bin on the iPad version
  • Inconsistencies on different platforms
  • Only 5GB is free for your OneDrive space
  • No auto-backup

You can easily delete pages or move them to different sections. The organisation of pages in OneNote can serve as an outline of your notes if you add titles to all the pages in your notebook. When you delete your pages on your iPad, you can’t recover them on your device. To do that, you need a desktop version of OneNote.  

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