Microsoft Whiteboard Reviews

by Aceman1991

I really like MicrosoftWhiteboard. Has the features I need and is simple and easy to use. But I cannot recommend it on iOS. It’s constantly crashing for me. I’ve waited for updates with hopes it would fix the issues. But I usually have to open it, wait for the first crash/lockup, force close, reopen go into note I want to edit, wait for it to crash/lockup again, reopen and have about 30 minutes or so of use then it will crash and lock up again. Reinstalled, resign in etc etc, all the normal app troubleshooting provides no meaningful results. I still hobble through it because I really like MicrosoftWhiteboard and having it sync with my work O365 account makes it easy to remotely collaborate. Shame it’s doesn’t run reliably.

by Elentrepreneur123

I was excited for the new whiteboard since it has been the best of all whiteboard apps on iPad. Unfortunately, the new update missed its mark. I use the whiteboard with a dark background, and now there is a bright white border along the top that I can’t get rid of (instead of the whiteboard area simply being full screen). On top of that, the eraser no longer “dynamically” erases strokes, it erases full lines at a time, which is a HUGE problem. Another problem is that sometimes when selecting a tool, I am unable to draw with it until I perform some magic steps to get it working again. Lastly, there is still no double tap support for Apple Pencil. Until these things are fixed, looks like I’m back to searching for a new whiteboard app that is functional and doesn’t require a subscription service to use.

by Hayden070707

I see so many people in the reviews using this for art so I tried it AND ITS TERRIBLE FOR ART!! Like first of all what you need to do for drawing is move the camera clockwise and counterclockwise for those perfect shapes or cute sketches second: when I’m using the pen I can zoom in or out I can’t go back or erase and it’s very confusing and I think you should fix these problems. I know you probably don’t care what I say because you people probably think “oh look at this little kid” and that’s fine think what you want I’m just saying for artists I would use this a lot if it had these things and if you still don’t care and you read all of this then sorry for wasting your time.

by TheHarinator

When using Apple Pencil, if any part of my palm touches the screen, it detects both my palm and pencil as my fingers. Then when I try to write something, it thinks that its a zoom or the whole page moves. It’s almost impossible to write anything on MicrosoftWhiteboard.

I’ve seen many posts about this issue which have been open for many years but seems like there’s no solution yet. I had to download other Apps just to overcome this issue. I bought an Office 365 account mainly for Whiteboard and OneNote but drawing mode on both apps are pathetic. I’m regretting getting Office 365 now.

This is the kind of thing that pushes people to move away from your ecosystem. FIX THIS MICROSOFT !!

by Toenailsmgee

MicrosoftWhiteboard used to be awesome. I used it for tutoring, for demonstrations at work, and for group work at school. I especially used it to write or draw on my iPad to show things to viewers using a computer.

Since the update it is unusable. It reads your hand when trying to write. It often doesn’t read my pencil, the eraser function is dumbed down. It used to be that when you erased quickly the eraser got bigger to erase larger areas. Now, it just erases small areas or the entire page with zero control or in between.

The way it writes the lines is not like regular pen and ink like it used to feel. Instead, the line feels like it is clinging to your pen which often causes strange mistakes in writing or drawing. This exists on 3 tested iPads with 3 different apple pencils.

This update ruined whiteboard and has made it unusable. I can no longer use it todo ANYTHING I used to use it for. I wish I could revert back to the old version because this new updated version makes it feel like an app designed by a novice developer where it is riddled with bugs and terrible functionality, instead of a program designed by one of the largest tech companies on the planet.

by Jcaprino

I tried… I tried to make this at work and give Microsoft another chance. But as usual they failed, offering an extremely glitchy application, and no ability to export my whiteboards to a vector format so they are all very low quality pictures. Don’t waste your time, instead pay for a really good app like GoodNotes 5.

I wish I would’ve found that out before. Note I do not work for GoodNotes five I am just telling you that after probably 12 to 15 hours of work on the free Whiteboard app, I finally gave up because I was having toRestart MicrosoftWhiteboard so many times and I cannot export to a good format. I finally pulled the trigger and bought good notes five and it is excellent should have done that from the start.

by Waah95

Before the new update MicrosoftWhiteboard used to be very useful for online teaching. I don’t understand how Microsoft turned very useful and powerful app into a useless one. MicrosoftWhiteboard no longer permit copy/paste. MicrosoftWhiteboard very slow and crash several times in the middle of the class. Every time it crash I have to reset the pens. No longer you can add pictures. It has so many problems to synch between my different devices. Whiteboard is not accessible if not connected to the internet even if you don’t want to be live on the net. Many others issues such the ruler and the different choices of pens also gone. I wish I could revert to the older version. I have no choice but to switch to another app. Very disappointing Microsoft 👎👎👎

by Dgvft6

I only gave it 2 stars because I wanted to love it. MicrosoftWhiteboard is possibly the most glitchy and frustrating app I’ve ever used. Impossible to write on because the tool bar at the bottom (which can’t be moved or minimized) constantly picks up anything you even slightly touch while writing, constantly jumping around the screen, zooming out, or moving things white you’re just trying to write. Not to mention the fact that it freezes every 8 minutes, requiring you to close out of MicrosoftWhiteboard to unfreeze it. Took me about 3x as long to finish my project as it should have. Would not recommend to anyone. I’m now looking for a different app to replace this one.

by Devalexwhite

Love the idea, the sticky note lists, templates, and google docs style collaboration are killer features. BUT, the implementation is HORRIBLE. I did a 4 person collab session. One person took 15 minutes to get logged in (for some reason you have to install the Microsoft Auth app but you don’t even need to open it???). People kept getting disconnected. MicrosoftWhiteboard crashes every time I accidentally double tap my Apple Pencil gen 2 (the eraser function). The lag is unbelievable, getting so bad at points that ink shows up a second after you draw. Panning around the art board is choppy. The smart grouping makes it impossible to select individual items. Filled with inconsistent UX (example: shapes work different than drawings so eraser won’t effect them).

by MisutaaUrufu

MicrosoftWhiteboard is decent enough. It feels a lot like a barebones version of OneNote’s drawing mode.

However, it also feels a lot like a barebones version of OneNote’s drawing mode. Yes, I meant to say that twice.

It features the same basic tools as OneNote, but it lacks any of the pen customizations:
• Ink/Stroke Thickness
• Ink Color

These may sound like simple and unimportant features, but they really do improve the drawing; writing experience, much like bolds and italics do in type.

They way it organizes whiteboards on the home page is nice, but it feels a bit barebones, both in style and in animation. Opening and closing whiteboards is a bit jarring as there is no UI animation for on/off-boarding the user from the whiteboard. A simple “zoom” animation would suffice for this purpose; and a simple, subtle lighting effect on the background of the home page would add more depth without being gaudy or too skeuomorphic. Mild rounding of the whiteboard corners would be nice as well.

In all, it’s the little things that count. This has potential, not only for business use, but personal use as well, as an idea-board and brainstorming utility.

by Emanguso

I really wanted to love MicrosoftWhiteboard. The idea is great, and I love that there no page boundaries while writing as there are in other writing apps I use. However I found several issues with MicrosoftWhiteboard.

1) The lag time while writing is HORRIBLE.

2) It is full of unexplained glitches. I would be writing on top of a drawing, and sometimes the writing would get sent behind the drawing (making it unreadable) and sometimes wouldn’t with no explanation or way to bring it to the “front.” This was extremely frustrating and cumbersome. Every time I hit the “undo” button, the screen jumped around. It is also hypersensitive to touch while resting your hand on the iPad while writing.

3) There is no way to enlarge your entire drawing, which was a bad surprise when I exported my work and saw that my writing was too small.

4) MicrosoftWhiteboard repeatedly kept logging me out while I was working. Further, the sharing function seems not to work properly, as I was unable to share it with my friend to collaborate even though she has a whiteboard account.

I would not recommend MicrosoftWhiteboard. The pros do not outweigh the many flaws and frustrations.

by Josey4628

... but still not ready for prime time. After the latest update that included “stability improvements,” I can’t use MicrosoftWhiteboard for longer than 2 minutes (not an exaggeration) before it either crashes or freezes and needs to be restarted. That’s not to say it was much better before. I’m using an iPad pro 3 - a pretty powerful device, but still experiencing freezing and crashing.

The export to OneNote feature always freezes at some point and requires a restart - I’m not sure if it sends as PDF, SVG or link to OneNote because I’ve never been able to complete the process.

The export to Teams feature will export then freeze and require restart. That shares a link to web version of whiteboard.

Web version of whiteboard only allows for inking and viewing... doesn’t even support typing which is a little weird to me.

When I can use MicrosoftWhiteboard , the templates are really cool, the inking works well (as good as OneNote) and I really love the idea of the collaboration features. Unfortunately I can’t use this at all with colleagues because the experience is pretty awful at the moment.

by Calexgo

The idea behind MicrosoftWhiteboard is great. I love to rewrite my notes on my iPad. I make concept maps by hand and save them as PDFs. I used to use another app but gave whiteboard a try. It has great lag with the Apple Pencil, and MicrosoftWhiteboard itself horrible lags when you zoom in and out into a big canvas. The lasso and move tool is gravely inaccurate and unpredictable . You go to select a portion to move it and when you swipe your finger to move it it won’t budge. The highlighter could be improved by adding color options and size. I really want to stay with MicrosoftWhiteboard as it has potential, but If they don’t update it soon with good changes I might abandon it.

by Midian_Breach

MicrosoftWhiteboard has a great opportunity to be a great teaching, office work, and most importantly work from home tool! But there are things that you could call creature comforts that in this day and age should be included as a base app support. I’m talking Apple Pencil (1st and 2nd gen) support, left handed support (please please please as a left handed user its very hard to write/draw when it detects input from my hand as I’m trying to write), and I think smarter selection support should be included.

For Apple Pencil support, you have the basic drawing support, but for Gen 2 pencils it lacks double tap on the pencil’s flat side to change to a previous tool or eraser tool which would be awesome to have.

Left handed support is a basic need. Add it as a setting to toggle on and implement. Otherwise you just infuriate people like myself who are left handed and can’t draw or write without jumping around on the screen or leaving random lines about.

On apps like Notability, selection is very easy, you just draw around an object, if you just get part of a line/photo/box etc it is considered selected. Here you have to get the entire object to select it which is fine, but is a tad bit annoying and makes you have to go slow to get everything included you want to select. Maybe have the option for both and include it as a setting to toggle on/off.

by KeiraFlahardy

Ok, first of all it is a good app to take notes and draw when you want to… I can take notes during church and when I’m done I’ll draw anything, and the shape configuring allows me to make things more precise. Here’s the bad thing, it can take forever to load sometimes and you can get a little impatient but most of all, it’s great.

by Navidabasi

1. I just installed MicrosoftWhiteboard on my windows and iphone and i could say I absolutely love it but there are some issues which i prefer to be fix as soon as possible such as:
1.if you wish to select something with lasso you need to take all the object at once but in some apps you could just make a quick circle around a little part of object and it will considered as selected.
2. I really need to change the aspects of sticky notes instead of just keeping it as a big or little square like if I need to make a mind node , i prefer to put a little rectangular

3. I’m Persian so I really wish to see language support (I mean when im using to write at both languages ENG & PER in one line it will be a total mess!!)

4. And some new extra features such as changing the color of your shapes which you just draw , giving some of the shapes a fixed separate background color instead of highlighting it)

5. And please add left hand support , please please please remove stacking highlights!

by A Fellow Living Organism

Love MicrosoftWhiteboard , visuals are great and definitely a good app compared to others, but there’s a 4 things, kind-of-not-really bugs that I wanted to point out.

1) I don’t know whether this is just my iPad being my iPad, but MicrosoftWhiteboard is a tad slow. Like, I’ll draw something and the stroke is a little laggy, or I scroll down and it’s choppy.

2) (edited) The stylus thing is working fine now, there was some weird problem with my old iPad and stylus. Anyways, new #2: MicrosoftWhiteboard crashes every now and then. Sometimes it takes away some of the notes I was writing.

3) When I zoom in or out, the paper, no matter what background I’m using, turns to graph and it’s kind of discombobulating.

4) The spaces/squares when I use variations of graph paper or dotted always stay the same size even if I zoom in, and it kind of gets rid of the concept of zooming in in those cases.

Most of these don’t bother me at all, but if MicrosoftWhiteboard crashing problem could be fixed, that would be great.

by Squilliam_R

As a teacher, I was looking for a whiteboard app to use on my iPad so I can eliminate my dependency on dry erase markers and stick with the Apple Pencil instead. Having used Microsoft apps before and being happy, Microsoft Whiteboard was the first one that I installed. Overall, I like it and find the features useful, but there is one major problem that prevents me from incorporating this into my classroom. When I use my Apple Pencil to draw, there is noticeable latency and the lines I draw are not exactly what I did with my Pencil. If this can be fixed, I will definitely use MicrosoftWhiteboard regularly.

by Marcy_Queen

I was looking through MicrosoftWhiteboard Store trying to find a decent drawing board app, and eventually found this one! It helps soooo much, especially when I’m doing physics or calculus homework. ☺️

However, an amazing feature you might want to consider: locking the screen in place. I don’t know how many times the screen just zooms in or out or just completely goes somewhere else on the board since I write with my hand laying on the tablet (it’s easier for me to write that way, rather then my hand floating above the tablet as I write). But locking the screen in place would help immensely! 😄

by Alymebo

I draw on my iPad, and I wanted a very simple, yet functional space to keep my references in one place so that I could access them quickly and scribble on them if needed. There’s no ads to ignore, no subscriptions, no micro transactions. If I need to access the same resources on my computer, I can simply pull up the website. Being able to lock the images in place is helpful.

My only peeve so far is that when I undo an action, it automatically selects the last image I inserted, which is kind of distracting, but it doesn’t appear to change the locked setting, so it’s not a huge deal.

Also, the glitter pens? HUGE plus, lol. They’re so pretty!

by Mattd8812

I really wanted to like MicrosoftWhiteboard. The integration with Windows and open-ended nature made it very appealing, but the fact that I can't use this with my iPad and Apple Pencil ruins the experience. I went to set my hand on the screen as I constantly do in OneNote, but instead of ignoring my hand, MicrosoftWhiteboard spit dots of ink all over the whiteboard, zoomed out, and then selected multiple things all from the touch of my hand. This is shoddy work and it's astonishing that Microsoft would even release MicrosoftWhiteboard in this state. Any testing would've IMMEDIATELY revealed the problem.

by K-Bails

Overall it’s a good app and very helpful on my tablet, but MicrosoftWhiteboard is just way too sensitive to touch without any way to decrease the sensitivity. It is incredibly frustrating trying to write notes on it and MicrosoftWhiteboard continuously shifts the whiteboard. The board zooms out almost every time I touch the screen. Hopefully this gets fixed soon before I throw my tablet at the wall out of frustration.

by Wolveslie

MicrosoftWhiteboard is decent enough. It feels a lot like a barebones version of OneNote’s drawing mode.

However, it also feels a lot like a barebones version of OneNote’s drawing mode. Yes, I meant to say that twice.

It features the same basic tools as OneNote, but it lacks any of the pen customizations:
• Ink/Stroke Thickness
• Ink Color

These may sound like simple and unimportant features, but they really do improve the drawing; writing experience, much like bolds and italics do in type.

They way it organizes whiteboards on the home page is nice, but it feels a bit barebones, both in style and in animation. Opening and closing whiteboards is a bit jarring as there is no UI animation for on/off-boarding the user from the whiteboard. A simple “zoom” animation would suffice for this purpose; and a simple, subtle lighting effect on the background of the home page would add more depth without being gaudy or too skeuomorphic. Mild rounding of the whiteboard corners would be nice as well.

In all, it’s the little things that count. This has potential, not only for business use, but personal use as well, as an idea-board and brainstorming utility.

by RobinInOR

It was working flawlessly for the last month as we were testing it. After the last update 11/13, cannot sign in, says admin has disabled. I’m the admin. Whiteboard on windows 10 is still working. Once this is fixed I’ll rate it a 5

When it does work, it’s great. Surprisingly quick - tested it from iPad and windows and updates from death side show up very quickly. MicrosoftWhiteboard works great even if you don’t have a surface hub.

by Lontronix

I’ve been looking forward to this since it was announced that it would be coming to iOS, I really wish Microsoft would have waited to release MicrosoftWhiteboard until it was more stable. Everything feels unresponsive, from creating a new white board to drawing and erasing.

by Nordekai

It’s “working” for what i need. It’s been crashing and hanging a lot, stopping my workflow. Otherwise, not horrible. I love being able to zoom in and out, write notes in various places, place sticky’s and re-size them. I've got one with a map of my area that i can do all the above on, pasted it like a picture, then can write notes for various locations.

by Dlangendorf

There are many apps like this one, in one form or another. What drives me batty is laggy performance, jagged handwriting and illustration. I can understand it on older devices, but it shouldn’t be this way on reasonably newer ones and with a Pencil. If an app’s handwriting is laggy and jaggy, it gets tossed aside. There’s no excuse. That said, MicrosoftWhiteboard has potential. By the way, One Note’s handwriting was awful for a long time. It’s better now but not as good as it could be. Handwriting quality is such a large part of the user experience and satisfaction, why scrimp on it?

by Apokalips

This could just be incompatibility with iOS 13, but MicrosoftWhiteboard appears to be quite buggy on an iPhone X, not respecting the safe zones that are difficult or impossible to tap. Also can't seem to resize text notes to fit their contents.

For now I'll be sticking with OneNote, but would love to see MicrosoftWhiteboard integrated, since there's a lot of overlap between the two in terms of functionality and purpose.

by Fyreous

I definitely like where MS is going with MicrosoftWhiteboard, and it’s one of the better “collaborative whiteboard” solutions for sure.

But I have one main pet peeve, and that is an inability to “lock” the board in place. I use it a lot with my Apple Pencil, but even though it rejects my palm from making markings on the board, it frequently interprets my palm as moving the board around. I wish there was an option to lock the board in place so that the canvas wouldn’t accidentally get moved around.

by Vasi13koula

Love using Microsoft software on my iPad and loved the idea of integration/communication with my OneNote. However, when I try to use the “send to OneNote” function, it’s telling me that there are no notebooks (which is not true). Would love for this to be fixed and then would definitely give it a 5/5.

by Mi Had Powell.

MicrosoftWhiteboard works great for sketching down ideas.

• There’s a major bug in MicrosoftWhiteboard that I encountered. Once in awhile when I try to draw, the bottom dock menu keeps switching back to where I cannot draw. I tried switching it back so that I could draw, but it keeps switching back to the default menu where the cut & paste is located at. As a result, I cannot draw on the board due to the menu switching.

by Icyyyy0907

I was looking through MicrosoftWhiteboard Store trying to find a decent drawing board app, and eventually found this one! It helps soooo much, especially when I’m doing physics or calculus homework. ☺️

However, an amazing feature you might want to consider: locking the screen in place. I don’t know how many times the screen just zooms in or out or just completely goes somewhere else on the board since I write with my hand laying on the tablet (it’s easier for me to write that way, rather then my hand floating above the tablet as I write). But locking the screen in place would help immensely! 😄