Products · Product
OneNote
Raised as a usability problem by 82 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 70 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
PDF text is searchable but can't be copiedUnreviewed
20102026- Copying text from OneNote pastes it as an image instead of text2026-02-11
- PDFs are searchable in OneNote but their text can't be copied2020-07-19
- Pasted text comes in with weird fonts and colours, and notes are hard to find or navigate2018-06-05
Quick notes require a long, tedious Microsoft loginUnreviewed
20102026- Opening the app to take a quick note forces a long, tedious Microsoft login2022-02-16
- Takes ages to open and get a note ready on iOS2018-02-13
- Navigating through a long note on a tablet setup was very painful2016-06-21
Sync too unreliable to pull up notes in meetingsUnreviewed
20102026- Sync is too buggy to rely on when pulling up notes in meetings2020-05-02
- Too many Microsoft accounts make syncing and keeping notes straight hard2019-12-17
- Turning off sync per notebook still leaves notes uploaded to OneDrive, requiring many workarounds2017-08-20
Formatting source code in OneNote is hardUnreviewed
20102026- Search is terrible and code formatting is terrible in OneNote2020-09-28
- Code formatting in notes isn't good, needing a third-party addin2020-01-28
- Formatting source code in OneNote is much harder than it should be2018-01-12
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 50 complaints
- Copying text from OneNote pastes it as an image instead of text2026-02-11
- Web version's search fails to find notes across all folders2026-01-05
- Daily popup says session needs refreshing and page reloads repeatedly2025-08-08
- Ctrl-C rarely works to copy text, and pasting into Jira yields a screenshot attachment2024-04-17
- Replacing text requires many manual steps across pinned search results and pages2024-04-11
- Notes get lost; notebook, folder and page navigation differs between versions and is confusing2024-01-17
- Sync conflicts split changes across copies, forcing manual retranscription of handwritten ink2024-01-16
- Removed subtabs and slow loading make it clunky; UI pushes users toward cloud storage2023-08-02
- Hard to keep formatting consistent and can't link notes easily2023-08-01
- Has to reload everything daily after timeouts and search only works within one folder2023-08-01
- Can only search one section of a notebook, not the whole notebook2023-07-06
- Notebook tabs disappeared and sync with SharePoint works poorly2023-07-06
- Product feels poorly cared for and is abysmal to use at work2022-12-21
- Web version needs daily refresh and can't search across all notebooks2022-10-16
- A later version broke the notes-on-the-side view the commenter had liked2022-10-05
- Loses track of notebook folders daily, forcing user to reload them all2022-03-21
- Opening the app to take a quick note forces a long, tedious Microsoft login2022-02-16
- Default group folders added to class notebooks cannot be deleted, even though adding one takes a few clicks2022-02-01
- Web client is too slow and frustrating for daily use2022-01-26
- Notebook setup is too restrictive and rigid for organizing things2022-01-11
- Author dislikes using OneNote for work notes, though no specific usability problem is named2021-09-17
- OneNote is buggy and slow, and barely usable on mobile2021-07-16
- Bloated and slow, so interacting with notes feels sluggish2021-04-17
- Replacing text requires many manual steps: copy, pin search, double-click each occurrence, paste2021-01-29
- OCR doesn't work from the app; must use separate Office Lens app, then move images manually2021-01-16
- Desktop app has fewer options than the old Office version2020-10-27
- Tags don't sync across machines and adding tags to shortcut keys is gone2020-10-27
- Constant scrolling on small screens; loses reading position after screen turns off2020-10-27
- Search is terrible and code formatting is terrible in OneNote2020-09-28
- Really hard to style text and get things looking how the user wants2020-08-25
- No intuitive way to link notes from different sections together2020-07-20
- PDFs are searchable in OneNote but their text can't be copied2020-07-19
- Backspacing too far deletes whole box and misplaces new ones2020-07-19
- Web clipper is horrible compared to Pocket for page snapshots2020-07-19
- Screenshotted slides aren't searchable and make the notebook huge and slow2020-07-18
- Doesn't reliably sync in background unless the app is opened regularly2020-05-18
- Note pages stay blank until the user drags the UI with the mouse2020-05-06
- Sync is too buggy to rely on when pulling up notes in meetings2020-05-02
- Search often fails to find what the user wants, sometimes not working at all2020-04-05
- Importing a PDF rasterizes it, leaving blurry or pixelated pages2020-03-10
- Code formatting in notes isn't good, needing a third-party addin2020-01-28
- Switching from highlighter to pen takes three taps in portrait mode2020-01-26
- Copy notebook dialog fails with notebooks containing many pages, forcing manual copy-paste2020-01-10
- Handwriting disappears or jumps, screen stops updating, heavy input lag requiring restarts2020-01-10
- Too many Microsoft accounts make syncing and keeping notes straight hard2019-12-17
- A single swipe and press deletes a whole notebook, with no recovery and the deletion syncs to desktop2019-06-29
- Tags limited to a small fixed number of slots with no icon import2019-06-23
- Switching away from the familiar file folder UI feels like something has failed2019-06-12
- Moving or deleting many notes locks the app for about 20 minutes2019-04-03
- Spent too much time figuring out how to use apps and fiddling with configuration2019-04-02