Error message "OneNote can't sync your notes because your account is out of space" but I have plenty of space on OneDrive

Question

I am running OneNote 2016. All of my Notebooks are in "OneDrive - Personal." I got this message while trying to update a a OneNote page. I checked my available space on onedrive.live.com; it says I have 5.3 Gb used out of 15 Gb. How is it that I am out of space? I have 15 gb due to bonus storage awarded for sharing signups to onenote.

• there is plenty of storage on my pc - over 150gb free
• this error happens in every notebook, not just one.
• this error is showing on my synced laptop also.

it was working fine yesterday, i have not added any large files.. and my largest notebook is 1.03gb, well below the 2gb limit.

EDIT: OK THIS IS STRANGE - WHEN I LOOK AT MY LARGEST NOTEBOOK IN BACKUPS IT IS 1.03 GB BUT WHEN I BROWSE ON ONEDRIVE THAT SAME NOTEBOOK IS 2.15GB.... AM I CORRECT WHEN I READ SOMEWHERE THERE IS A 2GB LIMIT TO ANY NOTEBOOK?

AND WHY WOULD THAT CAUSE MY OTHER NOTEBOOKS TO BE UNABLE TO SYNC?

Answer 1

update: i had to "export" my biggest notebook, then sync, and then finally i was able to use onenote online again. that is absolutely insane that MS locks user out of being able to do anything at all on onenote until they delete something or pay to upgrade. It is holding our data for ransom almost. Dirty dirty tactics.

proceeded to delete old unneeded data, then split the notebook into 2 smaller notebooks, then re-added them to onenote and synced.

also removed page versions which takes up a lot of space it seems.

I have my account working again but I lost an entire day's worth of work I could have been doing. If MS would just allow users a warning and grace period so we can access our data - that would have saved me HOURS of work. Now I have to keep checking my file sized frequently to avoid this happening all over again.

Very unhappy and unlikely to ever upgrade after this experience. I hope Google comes out with a competitive note taking app.

Answer 2

tried creating a new notebook so I could transfer some pages to it, IT WONT LET ME - "QUOTA LIMIT REACHED"  - This seems like an obvious decision by MS to limit the user's ability to fix storage issues - to steer the client towards buying more storage as the only solution. This feels very dirty on MS' part.