Microsoft OneNote

Raised as a usability problem by 17 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 16 threads.

People raised many different problems with Microsoft OneNote, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 19 complaints

Storage full blocks deleting notes, and export only works through cloud2026-01-05
Large Copilot icon blocks text and can't be moved, minimized or closed2026-01-04
Chinese text is flagged with false spelling errors because only one spell-check language can be chosen2024-04-29
OneNote is shoved into the taskbar multiple times, pushing unwanted product placement at users2023-05-02
Making a colored square shape is a pain2023-03-06
Printing opens OneNote by default and it is pinned to the taskbar repeatedly2022-06-06
Unwanted edits get synced instantly to shared pages, causing embarrassment2021-09-19
Renaming a notebook requires browser OneDrive, day-long sync waits, and reopening each notebook on every device2020-07-20
Text must be manually placed in floating frames, which is annoying when plain text notes are wanted2020-07-19
Text blocks move freely, so small accidental drags misalign notes2020-07-19
Tutorials only describe visible UI, so the user can't learn how to use it2020-04-04
UI is a disaster for pen and touch use since radial menus were removed2019-01-09
Dropping a file onto the app icon does not archive it; you must first create a page2018-09-19
Gets too complicated to organize once many projects each have many sections2018-04-14
Many keyboard shortcuts changed in Win 10 and later OneNote versions2017-07-26
Clipped websites come out as images, so the content can't be worked with afterwards2016-09-14
Hard to find tabs once there are many; pages require scrolling under a tab2016-01-19
Too many tabs or pages become hard to navigate; page order is wrong2016-01-19
Clicking a document link in Chrome fails to open it in OneNote2011-08-31