Changes are coming for OneNote

We're starting to see information coming from Microsoft about the future of OneNote Desktop and OneNote for Windows 10. Their latest announcement shares the integration of the two products into one, with Desktop being the last one standing and "desired" functionality from Windows 10 to be integrated into the desktop application.

I'm curious to see what functionality in Windows 10 get carried over to Desktop and what changes they make to Desktop to accomodate the changes and improvements. Hopefully they will continue to make changes to the Android and iOS applications at the same time so we see OneNote continue it's long term growth and success as a note taking platform.

Update while in draft...

There's been quite the mixed reaction to the notification sent out by Microsoft. Many people are looking at the dark side of possible options with the loss of features, functionality, and a poor user experience.

I have a hard time thinking that Microsoft is going to take this particular application and run it into the ground by combining the Windows version and the desktop version. They've already outlined as part of their future plans the integration of the fluid framework into OneNote to make Word, Excel, and PowerPoint functionality available from within the tool.

These kinds of application level changes are necessary to provide them the flexibility to integrate these upgrades. Yes change is scary. Yes, you are likely to lose some functionality. Yes, you are likely to gain some functionality. Yes, OneNote is going to be around for quite a long time.

All that being said there are some changes that I would love to see happen within the application. A revisiting of the tagging system for example, or perhaps an improvement on multiplatform support for pages when working on desktop and then moving to mobile. Speaking of mobile I would love to see Microsoft taking some guidance from Samsung and integrating some of the capabilities that Samsung Notes provides on the mobile level into mobile OneNote.

All in all I look at the notification from Microsoft as being a positive. It means that they will have continuing support for the application, we will see growth and integration with other parts of Microsoft 365, and OneNote will continue to provide a strong, reliable set of features to help us be more organized and more productive.