Note Taking Frustration

I’ve been struggling a bit with note taking the past few months, specifically notes for work.

I work at a hospital and with patient data. As such, I’m hesitant to install my main note takers (Obsidian for thought, Evernote for reference) on my work PC for security reasons. It’s an Office 365 environment so I decided to use OneNote a few months back, though I rarely note patient-level data. It’s more high-level things like meeting notes.

It works okay but I like to use my iPad and Apple Pencil for meeting notes and OneNote is constantly asking me to sign in. On top of that, it often won’t sync or it’ll say “please sign in”, but I can’t click the link to actually sign in. I end up spending more time fighting with it than working in it. I like using my iPad for meeting notes because I find writing by hand seems to offer a bit more “retention” and I’m easily able to add diagrams, arrows connecting points etc. Unfortunately, OneNote randomly asking me to sign in halfway through a meeting is no fun.

To combat this I figured I’d try GoodNotes on my iPad. Again, making sure not to reference any personal data. I figured this is the same as the people who carry a physical Moleskine into a conference room. It works well, but I do find there to be some friction writing in this way. What notebook is it in, I need to go to a new page, what do I want for lines etc.

I guess I’m asking for how you all take work notes in an environment where your corporate structure is a little stiff.

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Do you have any way of sharing files between your iPad and PC? Share on a company file server, MS OneDrive on your company account?. If so why not let the files reside there in standard folders?

  1. Would work buy you an iPad that could let you into the work network and apps?
  2. Any chance that paper notes and scanning later would work as discussed throughout this thread that was mostly about digital notepads?
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I struggle with this as well, right now I can use my mac at work so I use Apple Notes and just have a shortcut to create a simple daily note in a daily notes folder in AN. I then just use this for all meetings during the day. Works well on the iPad with the pencil or keyboard and I just transfer actions from it at the end of the day.

I’m moving jobs in Jan and am likely to be locked into Windows. I’m thinking about using Craft as I can take notes on the ipad and then use the web client on the PC.

What happens if you turn off WiFi during the meetings, take your notes, and then turn on WiFi afterwards?
The problem as I understand it is that you get login quieries from OneNote. If there is no WiFi/Internet connection, it may not even bother about login?

I can try that, though I suspect that will just make it angrier. LOL

@AppleGuy Didn’t you switch do Apple Notes from Evernote? What was the reason to switch back?

For personal notes yeah, I’m back on Evernote. LOL. I toggle back and forth.

My main reasons are:

  1. Evernote ingests things Apple Notes doesn’t. You can email into it, take screen shots, and clip entire pages, not just links
  2. It works cross platform
  3. EN is easy to get notes out of. Apple Notes stores things in a hidden database
  4. Apple Notes has no versioning. Accidentally delete a page of your notes and close the app? You’re done. I know this is unlikely but things happen.

I can’t use Evernote at work though.

All too likely, in my experience. The versioning feature in the NotePlan app that I use has saved my bacon more than once!

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