One Note - we couldn't open this section

Question

I am not able to open the sections in the One note app I am getting the error "we couldn't open this section" (See attached photo). This happens both on my mac, and also on my windows 11 laptop.

Everything works fine in the web one note app, I can see all my sections and everything syncs fine on the web. The problem occurs only in the apps. I did reinstall the app a couple of times but didn't solve the problem.

I know this question has been raised a coupled of times but I was not able to figure a solution. I have tried every possible solution suggested but without any luck.

I would appreciate any help

Answer 1

Hi All,

The issue you encountered was related to service incident OP420363 Some users may be unable to sync their notebooks from the OneNote desktop client an iOS app which is resolved as of Friday, August 26, 2022, at 8:53 PM UTC.

More info: This issue affected both the Win64 and Mac desktop clients, as well as the iOS app. While we were focused on remediation, we received reports that some users may have been able to use the web app as a potential workaround. Users on the Win32 desktop client weren't impacted by this issue.

Final status: We've completed the revert of the offending update and we've verified via telemetry that this has resolved the issue.

Start time: Thursday, August 25, 2022, at 7:36 PM UTC
End time: Friday, August 26, 2022, at 8:53 PM UTC

Tenant administrators can view current information and updates on SHD at the link here:

https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/servicehealth/advisories/:/alerts/OP420363

Please check again at your end to confirm if the issue is resolved.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the trouble this has caused. We appreciate your understanding. Stay safe and stay healthy.

With sincerest regards,

Neha Singh | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

Hi All,

Thank you for sharing your experience here. We apologize for the inconvenience the problem caused you. I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing those.

From your description, it seems that you cannot sync notebooks successfully with OneNote client on Windows/Mac/iPhone/iPad.

If so, recently we received several users report about the same scenario and behavior. We do understand it has affected your work and apologize for the inconvenience.

To help you and the other members have a clear picture of this issue status, here is a summary of this issue. 

Issue symptom:

=======================

OneNote client couldn't sync or open notebooks successfully. Changing network environment didn't help.

Environment:

=======================

The latest version of OneNote app on Windows/Mac/iPhone/iPad.

Current status:

================

We have tested it on our side with the latest version of OneNote client on Mac and windows, and we cannot reproduce the situation in OneNote desktop client.

At the same time, we also tested the OneNote online and OneNote online is running normally with out the behavior(also mentioned by some members), if so, on the one hand, you can use OneNote for web temporarily.

On the other hand, for the situation you encountered, we apologize for the inconvenience caused by this behavior. Since we couldn't reproduce the same situation as yours, this issue may need to checked from background. The best way to solve this issue is to report issue to related team. You may contact your Office 365 admin to help raise a ticket, Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Docs for further information and support because the engineers in related team have higher permission and resource than us. 

Meanwhile, we setup a main thread for this issue and we will update the latest information there.

We appreciate your cooperation and understanding!

Sincerely,

Sean Cai | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 3

Dear Chris Andrew Martin,

Thanks for your sharing in our community.

We didn't receive any report about this behavior from Microsoft so far, since we couldn't repro the same scenario on our side and we don't have the permission level to investigate your local environment, we still recommend you to open a support ticket in Microsoft admin center.

We will keep following this behavior and update this thread if we got anything new.

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Sean Cai | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 4

Dear Frixos Dimitriadis01,

Thanks for posting in Microsoft community.

We feel sorry to see this scenario. We test OneNote and we couldn't repro the same behavior. Since both Mac and your laptop have the same behavior, we sincerely recommend you contact your Microsoft 365 administrator, follow steps in this article and try to create a support ticket to contact Online Support. The support team over there has higher permission than us, they can remotely help check the situation on your side, involve more resource to collect logs and help you check your local environments. This would be the most efficient way for you.

For reference: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin?

Thanks for your cooperation, have a good day.

Sincerely,

Sean Cai | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 5

I am having the same issue. I contact Microsoft support and they said, just report the issue on the online forum.

I hope they fix it soon I is causing a great disruption to my work day, because I use one note for my team colaboration.