Microsoft knows you're deep in Evernote, so it made a OneNote Importer

sincity · March 11, 2016

Anyone who has watched a Microsoft keynote within the past year or so knows all about the power and versatility of OneNote for Windows 10. But what if you're neck-deep in, say, Evernote? Turns out, Microsoft has an app for that, too.

The Redmond, Wash. firm has published a new conversion tool that allows Evernote users to (kind of) quickly and easily bring their notes from that service to Microsoft's. It's simply dubbed the OneNote Importer, and you can download it for free in a "preview" edition right now.

But, if Microsoft has already made, in its eyes, a superior note taking solution, why bother making such an app?

As Bill Nye would say, it's all about friction

The reason for the OneNote Importer is simple: no amount of evangelizing – and Microsoft sure does a lot – can sway some people who simply have too much invested in another solution.

It's for this same reason that Apple released an iOS conversion app on Android's Google Play Store. This is all about reducing the friction as much as possible for you and I to switch from one service or platform to another.

However, if you're strictly an Evernote Web user (like I was before writing this very sentence), you'll have to download and log into the service's desktop app before you can use this tool.

So, that alone was one level of friction I had to surpass to check out this little app.

So, does the thing work?

Once you download and launch the app, it becomes immediately obvious that this is most definitely a preview. For one, the app's overall resolution does not scale with sharper displays.

At any rate, making the conversion happen is simple. Just log into your Evernote account through the app, select which Evernote notebooks you'd like to import, then log into your Microsoft account (or a school or work account).

From there, you can decide how the notes will be organized once they're imported into OneNote before clicking the "Import" button. Finally, you watch the progress bar slowly move toward the right, depending on how many notes you're importing and accept the prompt to open OneNote.

But it's not over yet: your OneNote will still need to sync said notes, but that process only takes a few more seconds. Just make sure Evernote is not currently open anywhere else, or else the sync simply won't happen.

So, yes, the OneNote Importer works like a charm, if an unpolished charm. And, as Microsoft is eager to tell you on its download page, its app offers everything that Evernote does (and more) for free.

The fact that you can draw on notes with OneNote alone might be enough for some to switch, but friction is a mighty powerful force – both literally and figuratively.