OneNote cleaning upup.. Restart required

Fran O'Reilly 20 Reputation points
2025-10-28T15:59:44.0133333+00:00

The error message reads, "We are sorry. OneNote is cleaning up the last time it was open. Please wait." After the progress bar reaches the end, a dialogue box opens in the middle of the screen saying "it looks like OneNote is having trouble starting right now." Restart your computer and start OneNote again." This is on a Dell desktop machine, running the latest updates on Windows applications, and experienced both on Windows 10 and Windows 11

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows
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John Oliver 11,675 Reputation points Independent Advisor
2025-10-28T16:35:24.52+00:00

Hello Fran O'Reilly, thanks for posting this in our community.

This issue is often related to corrupted cache files or a stuck process. First, try ending all OneNote-related processes. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager, look for any instances of OneNote.exe or Microsoft OneNote, then right-click and choose End Task for each.

Next, clear the OneNote cache. This won’t delete your notebooks just temporary files. Press Win + R, type *%localappdata%\Microsoft\OneNote*, and open the folder that matches your version (for example, 16.0 for Office 2016 or Microsoft 365). Inside, delete the cache folder, or rename it to something like cache_old as a backup.

Hope this works on your device.

Kind regards,

John Oli 

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