Microsoft has opened another front in the battle of the note-taking apps.
In March, Microsoft released a free data-import tool for its Windows 7 and later operating systems that addresses one of the biggest pain points of switching from Evernote to OneNote: migrating content. Once installed, the software transfers a user’s notes—having Evernote for Windows installed and configured to access their accounts is recommended to speed up the process—to the cloud-enabled OneNote app.
According to Scott Shapiro, product marketing manager for Microsoft OneNote, many Evernote users have taken the software giant up on its offer.
“Since last March, we have helped Windows users import 71 million Evernote pages to OneNote,” wrote Shapiro in an Aug. 18 blog post. Now, the OneNote Importer tool is also available to Mac users.
The software requires a Mac system running the latest version of OS X (10.11), dubbed El Capitan, and above. (Its successor, the macOS Sierra, is slated to arrive this fall.) As with the Windows version of the tool, Microsoft recommends that users sign into their Evernote for Mac client to save time and ensure that the most recent, potentially un-synced notes, are successfully imported.
Earlier this summer, Evernote announced a price hike, raising the monthly cost of its Plus plan by a dollar to $3.99 and the Premium plan to $7.99 from $5.99. Buying a yearly subscription lowers the price of both the Plus and Premium plans by 27 percent, to $34.99 and $69.99 per year, respectively. Just in time for the back-to-school season, students with a valid .edu or .ac.uk email address can grab a year of Evernote Premium for $17.50, a savings of 75 percent, for a limited time.
The Basic plan, while still free, is now subject to restrictions that limit the service’s note-syncing functionality to two devices. Previously, Evernote Basic users could sync their notes across an unlimited number of smartphones, tablets and PCs (accessing notes via a desktop browser does not count as a device).
For the price of an Evernote Premium plan (students excepted), users can upgrade to the full Office 365 suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook), Shapiro wrote. “Following Evernote’s recent price changes—their Premium offer ($69.99 per year) is now the same price as Office 365 Personal ($69.99/year). Office 365 gives you OneNote, plus all the Office apps you know and love that are always up-to-date, and 1TB of cloud storage.”
OneNote, once a part of the paid Office software suite, is now available as a free app that syncs across all of a user’s devices. Apart from the browser app, OneNote is available on iOS, Android, and of course, Windows. The note-taking software also features deep integration with Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud file storage, sync and sharing service and Office 365.
Evernote hasn’t been sitting still, however. In June, the company extended its passcode lock function to the free, Basic plan. The company also recently added a highly requested feature, business card scanning, to its Evernote Business for Salesforce integration.
