Looking for OneNote alternative

Forester1

Well-known member
Greetings. I admit that I am an addict of Microsoft OneNote. In the office version, the layout of Notebooks, tabs, and pages is perfect for me. At work it pretty much replaced the file cabinet for most of us, because it kept documents so well organized and easy to refer to. I have a huge notebook on my home PC just for Trainz information! When I got my new Windows machine and went to use Windows OneNote, I found out it was tied to OneDrive, and on the PC there was no export or save as function. Everything is kept in a database with the only access being the user interface. To back it up, you have to figure out where the database is stored and back up that folder, but I don't know if it will restore in the event of a failure. Or if for some reason, Microsoft should drop it from Windows. At first, I copied everything to Evernote, which works much the same, but because I keep so much information, I soon hit the limits of EverNote (It is not offline, but online storage), so I had to copy everything back over to OneNote.

I had to disconnect OneDrive because it tried to sync everything up there, and it filled up and started throwing errors because it has a 5GB limit. Deleting stuff from OneDrive is problematic, because I read that if it is sync'd it will also delete it off of your PC. So, I had to back up my PC, delete everything from OneDrive (I had never asked it to sync anything up there, but it did anyway), disconnect OneDrive, then restore my PC.

Sorry for being so long-winded! Anyway, I am still looking for an alternative, but I don't find the Notebook-tab-pages type interface anywhere else. Google Keep is free, but it does not appear to have that easy method of organization. So, I am wondering if anyone out there has a super, duper information storage and organization app that they would recommend. It has to hold a lot of information of every type, be easy to organize, and preferably freeware or open source. If I find something, I am still going to have to manually hand copy everything over from OneNote due to the lack of export or save-as, but I will hopefully have it in something recoverable. Thanks for any recommends!
 
I tried OneNote a few years back for my content creation notes but never kept it up. TBH, much of the information I need about Trainz is in the Trainz WiKi and I'm in there every day. But it can be a bear to find stuff and even my Chrome collection of "interesting" pages is chaotic.

Because of my particular interests in Trainz I make lots and lots of test assets to explore ideas, techniques and test scripts. Guess what? - I can never find what I made more than a week ago. Brain is failing too! So, yes I need some kind of indexing system as well. What I do have is a spreadsheet that lists all the kuids I have used over the years which, surprisingly, does help out at times. That is kind of a solution although not as flash as OneNote. You could use a spreadsheet to list where notes are stored on disk. If its Excel then Microsoft will probably want to stick on OneDrive as well. Mine is disabled - I think.

OneNote, and all the alternatives I looked at, all want to be collaborative and so share information ("Danger, Will Robinson!"). No thanks, I want to store local and look after my own backups.

You could consider paper notebooks, binders, etc. I've tried that too including a complete print out of the Content Creation Guide.
 
Thanks for the ideas, Paul. At its simplest essence, I kind of use OneNote as an old-fashioned digital card file, where each page can hold whatever I want, and the pages are all listed down the left side along with the tabs for different subjects or categories. I could use a spreadsheet program (I use Libre Office) to perhaps make workbooks. That might be acceptable, especially as Libre uses the Open Documents format. Then the sheets would be listed along the bottom. Almost anything can go into a spreadsheet, including images and links. I might try starting a basic workbook and see how far I go. I might also be able to use Libre Base as a database, as long as I could keep the entries as free-form as possible. I will have a look at that as well. I am not sure either will be as handy as OneNote is, but as I say, it may be acceptable. I also just saw a review of a free note app called Joplin, so I will be trying that as well.
 
I've had a time to play with OneNote and here is what I see. Bear in mind, I am NOT a OneDrive expert. I used it largely as a fancy clipboard.

It sounds like your Notebooks are being saved to your local OneDrive folder. Anything in this folder is synced to the cloud automatically. Note this is syncing not backing up. Deleting anything from either side deletes it from the other side.

It appears that OneNote allows you to create new notebooks locally outside of the OneDrive folder. I save mine to a folder on my 4 TB drive.

It also appears that under settings for the notebook, you can choose to Share/Move the location where the Notebook is saved. I did a test on a new notebook with one note in it and it synced the contents of the notebook to the new location. It might be possible to move your old folders out of the OneDrive folder to a new location this way although it was slow for a virtually empty notebook. I strongly recommend you research this first before trying it with a valuable notebook. Check out Google for moving OneDrive notebook methods.

Of course, the other solution is to get a Office 365 subscription. Those include 1 TB of Onedrive Space per user.
 
I think you are probably using the OneNote that comes with MS Office? That is what we used at work and it has those features. The free Windows version does not have the option of moving where things are put, not does it even have the same type of files. There are no notebook files per se, just a database where everything is stored. That is the part I don't like about it. I will definitely check out Scrivener. Thanks for the tip!
 
That syncing thing stinks and has burned me as well. I disabled the OneDrive utility and only access my OneDrive via the web to prevent stuff from not being in the right place when I need it.

OneNote is not the same as it was unless you use Office 2013 or some other installed version of Office. The online version appears to be all cloud-based. On my Office 2013 version, the only thing that gets synced to my One Drive, or will attempt to do so, is the Quick Notes. The rest of the data will be local including the actual database which is located in my Documents folder under OneNote. I tried changing the QuickNotes path, but I can't or at least I can't figure out how to do it at least yet.

Another utility I was clued in on is azzCardfile This is similar to the old card file we used to have in Windows 95. It has similar functions plus more including the ability to store pictures. It can handle quite a large number of records before it stops but then you can create a new card file set.
 
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