Section in OneNote Notebook cannot be deleted, keeps coming back (Partially solved)

Question

Hello! First up, I have looked for answers to this problem on this forum, but I haven't found any answers that work for me. In fact, it seems that there are several others who cannot resolve this problem, and that's why I'm posting this question.

The problem in brief: I have a section in a OneNote notebook that refuses to be deleted. It either cannot be deleted (in OneNote Online) or reappears shortly after being deleted (OneNote for iPad).

The problem began with this section of the notebook having trouble syncing. after trying other options, I moved all the pages from that section into a new section without problems. However, the old section remains and cannot be deleted. In OneNote Online, if I select this section I get the error message "We're Sorry. Something went wrong and we couldn't load this content. Refreshing the browser may fix the problem." (Refreshing the browser does not fix the problem.) Right clicking on the section shows a context menu with the options Rename and Delete among others, but all choices are greyed out except for New Section.

In OneNote on iPad, when I select the section, I get the message "The section could not be opened" (translated from Swedish, actual message is "Det gick inte att öppna avsnittet"). I can delete the section by swiping left on it, giving me the warning "Do you really want to delete this section?". After confirming, the section disappears, but after a long period of syncing, the section reappears as if nothing happened.

I use OneNote on multiple platforms -- on Windows 10, Mac OS, iPad and iPhone. My notebooks are synced to OneDrive. The misbehaving section only appears in the iPad app and on OneNote Online. I might misremember things, (this actually started more than a year ago), but I believe the problem has mostly been in the iPad client.

Update: As I was writing this, I had the idea to try deleting OneNote from my iPad and then reinstall it. It worked in the sense that I no longer see the corrupted section in OneNote on my iPad either -- it is now only visible in OneNote Online. So this problem has now gone from being an annoyance to not mattering much, since I rarely use OneNote Online. Still, if there is a way to fix this error i'd still be interested in knowing about it.

Answer 1

You can try this:

1. Go to www.onenote.com
2. right click the notebook
3. select Export Notebook
4. should create a ZIP-file with the notebook on your computer
5. save/copy the re-import link from the result window

Now open the ZIP-file, delete the ominous section and re-import the notebook using another name.

Bernd