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OneNote not synching and seems to have lost all my notes

Anonymous
2015-09-18T18:18:35+00:00

Had a forced Office update (dogfood I guess) to 2016 yesterday. When I tried to open OneNote after all the Office apps shut down for the update it kept demanding email login info, even though my Skype and Outlook came back--not quite the same but at least all the contact info seems to be there--without requiring a login. It said my standard Microsoft work address wouldn't work 'cause it belongs to a company. I tried a couple other email addresses and passwords but no joy. I didn't know OneNote was independently secured. If I did know it was probably years ago. If I have the right email address it's in OneNote (stupid irony).

I tried pulling the backups (click File, and then click Open Backups), but there's nothing there, just a couple of Quick Notes default pages, which are empty. Does that mean everything's gone?

As part of trying to recover the notebook, I somehow I moved my notebook (with the dozen or so pages) to the Misplaced Sections. It also shows just a bunch of default pages that are empty. It says it can't sync some changes in the section 'cause the file was moved or deleted. When I check the History, all I get, even for six months of recent edits, is a couple of untitled, blank pages.

Is there anything else to try, any other places to pull backups from? I don't know why all the backups disappeared with the access. Why does OneNote require access that even Outlook doesn't? Have there been problems with updating OneNote in  upgrade to Office 2016?

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-01-13T00:24:59+00:00

    Yeah... that didn't work.. I guess OneNote is **** and just deleted all my important stuff. I now see why people prefer apple Macs instead...

    80+ people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2017-03-22T11:57:18+00:00

    I had similar problems; seems to stem from the fact that I had old version of Office... that had expired .. but still installed, on the same laptop.. when I downloaded & installed the Office365 business version (with all new 2016 local apps).   

    After 2016 installed, I saw that the Notebooks seemed to appear fine, I bounced around a bit and nade one or two edits to a few books.   (I have over 5 years of accumulated OneNote goodness, many books.. some local, some on my OneDrive).   But, when I finally dug into the details... I saw that apparently OneNote gave preference to the 2016 version, and never sync'd the local changes.. and in fact, sync'd the last (old) cloud version over all of my current versions!!!  I seemed to lose a ton of work!!

     FREAKED OUT.

    GOOD NEWS:

    I finally found (and was able to restore most of my lost content from) 'backup' copies... which are here:

    C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote

    in this folder, I found both '14.0'  (older version) and '16.0' folders, both of which contain a 'Backup' folder.. and was then able to open the '.one' files from the ..\Backup folder and manually copy/paste their contents into my 2016 notes.

    Hope this helps someone :-)

    MICROSOFT:  something seems to be taking version precedence over datetimestamp precedence when trying to decide 'what the most current copy of the truth is' ... when installing 2016 over older versions.

    40+ people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2016-01-11T15:53:10+00:00

    And you saved everything on OneDrive right?

    If so, close your open notebooks.

    Open internet explorer in in-privatr or google chrome in incognito mode.

    Go to http://onenote.com

    Log in

    You should now se all the notebooks that are stored on onedrive. If you do not see it, it might have been lost

    30+ people found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2016-01-09T02:21:30+00:00

    ME TOO!! It's too stressful and I need help ASAP... I also lost all my notebooks and all I manage to find are some empty built-in quick notes and not even half of one of my notebooks. What can I do?!?!?!?!?

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
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  5. Anonymous
    2016-08-18T17:00:40+00:00

    Same problem here.  Solved for me with the following:

    1. In OneNote desktop app go to File > Info.
    2. Select Settings > Properties for the problem notebook.
    3. In the "Notebook Properties" dialog box click the "Change Location" button.
    4. In the "Choose a sync location for this remote notebook" dialog box go up two folder levels, select "Documents" then select the folder containing your notebook.
    5. Click the "Select" button then click the "OK" button.

    It seems the path contained "^." before the Documents folder name.

    https://d.docs.live.net/c9ada226b\*\*\*\*\*\*/^.Documents/General

    https://d.docs.live.net/c9ada226b\*\*\*\*\*\*/Documents/General

    Everything seems fine now.  Hope this helps.

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
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