Erratic search function

Question

In MS OneNote Version 2409 Build 16 run in MS Office 365 on a PC without cloud synching, I find the search function inconsistent in when it does and doesn't find the same ASCII string across notes. For instance, it will sometimes find a given string within the session in which this has been typed or pasted, but not in a subsequent session.

Answer 1

Dear Andy Stirling

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. I am happy to help you

I wonder whether there is any route through which you might be able to refer this case directly. It seems more likely to be successful?

I am sorry that as a support member of the forum, I do not have the higher privileges and resources to assist you in obtaining OneNote's activity logs to further assist you in investigating this phenomenon. I apologize for that.

I would contact support at the link below, refer to this article and select the region code for your country Contact Business Support.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Tin | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

Dear Tin Zhang,

I greatly appreciate the rapid effective personal attention that you’ve given to this problem. Many thanks. Although we’ve not solved it, you’ve given very valuable help towards ruling out some possible kinds of remedies and highlighting others.

Your suspicion that sheer notebook data volume may be involved is reinforced by an apparently separate problem I have. This is the periodic blanking of text towards the latter half of the largest page in this notebook.

In this, the cursor position shows the text is there, but it is invisible against the white page background. The problem typically resolves for no apparent reason after a few machine on/off cycles. I suspect this is data volume-related?

I could directly approach the developers about this. But given how organisations typically work, I wonder whether there is any route through which you might be able to refer this case directly? It seems more likely to be successful?

All the best,

Andy

Answer 3

Dear Andy Stirling

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. I am happy to help you

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation.

I used the characters you provided here to do a test, I copied the string to a different page and also tried to re-search the string after closing the notebook, but I did not encounter incorrect search results:

But the present problem is odd, because a search for this kind of string across different pages in many sections sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. The same failure occurs across a large number of strongs structured in the same way as I describe here.

I have also noticed that the data in your actual work is much larger than the data I tested, and I speculate that this may be the reason for this phenomenon.

Moreover, I didn’t notice the behavior is caused due to any setting in the OneNote.

In this situation, I am sorry and recommend you to connect with the related development team where they can check the internal sources and investigate the issue further.

So, I request you to connect with your IT admin of your organization (How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support) and ask them to raise a new service request from the Microsoft 365 admin center so that the related development team will connect with you and investigate the issue further.

Reference: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn

Note: I apologize for redirecting you to related development support team because the moderators in this community are limited with the resource for further investigation and to get a quick resolution to your problem, I requested it.

Sincerely,

Tin | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 4

Thank you for your quick response. The short answer, is that an illustrative example of the many text strings I am trying to exact-search for (using quotation marks) across multiple sections of a notebook is "int&prg#zz".

I am aware that non-letter symbols do not register in searches. But the search function does seem capable of finding this exact string within a page and intermittently across many pages too. For instance it has successfully found this string immediately after the string was first typed into a particular page. But strangely it fails to find it thereafter.

The wider context for this is that the Notebook concerned is built around a large OneNote database of coded topics. The main page features an index of tags for a very large full-text bibliographic database. This comprises more than 15,000 entries on a single main Notebook page, linked to single page entries for each specific topic..

Each tag on this main page is coded with a couplet of three-letter tags, joined in various permutations with the symbol '&' or digits '1' ... 'n'. For instance, the above tag 'int&prg' stands for the topic 'colonial modernity'. The tag is constructed by coupling the three-letter code 'int' (for 'international affairs') with the three letter code 'prg' ('progress').

Each of the >15000 tags links to a dedicated page in a different section of the same Notebook. Each of these pages is cross-linked by similar tags to other associated topic pages. When tags are used for these general cross-links they are preceded by a '0', so that all instances of a specific cross-link can be searched for in a discriminating way.

The specific type of string this query began with ('int&prg#zz') occurs within the text of a page, typically at the end of a line of text. Here the suffix '#zz' distinguishes such specific instances of this tag from the general links above, so that these can be searched for separately.

I could say more about the rationale for this database system if you like. It generally works superbly. But the present problem is odd, because a search for this kind of string across different pages in many sections sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. The same failure occurs across a large number of strongs structured in the same way as I describe here. I am unable to work out what determines conditions for success or failure.

I'd be very grateful for your help.

Yours

Andy

Answer 5

Dear Andy Stirling

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. I am happy to help you.

Could you please copy-paste your string to me. This way I can test it with me.

I look forward to your reply. Thanks for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Tin | Microsoft Community Moderator