Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows
A family of Microsoft products that enable users to capture, organize, and reuse notes electronically.
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Will not create a backup trying to setup the new OneNote so it will not complete
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Rod Fouts
0
Reputation points
When attempting to setup OneNote I get the following error message "Unable to create backup" so I cannot continue setup
Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows
2 answers
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![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(22.400000000000002, 81%, 12%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EAD%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Arlene D 22,490 Reputation points Independent Advisor2025-11-24T23:20:40.96+00:00 Thanks for sharing this. What version of OneNote are you setting up, OneNote for Windows 10 or OneNote for Microsoft 365?
The backup error usually means OneNote cannot write to your Documents folder, so check if your OneDrive is signed in and if the OneNote Notebooks folder in Documents is accessible. After confirming permissions, restart OneNote and try the setup again.