folders are showing up twice when I open one note

Question

I upgraded to OneNote 365. After syncing I closed OneNote. when I reopened it I found duplicate folders. One set came from Documents >OneNote Notebooks, and the other set came from OneDrive - Personal > OneNote. When I look in:

File explorer C:\Users\JohnWarren\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote\16.0\Backup[folder name] there are two entries for every page in the Folder. I only want to sync to: OneDrive - Personal > OneNote. How do I fix this issue?

Answer 1

Hi,

Thanks for reaching out! This usually happens because OneNote saves notebooks in two places by default your local Documents > OneNote Notebooks folder and your OneDrive Personal > OneNote folder. When you upgraded and synced, both locations were linked, which caused duplicates. The backup folder just reflects that.

Could you check if the duplicates have the same names and content, or if there are differences? That will tell us if it’s just a sync issue or if we need to merge unique pages.

To fix this, open OneNote and go to File > Info to see where each notebook is stored.

Close the ones pointing to your local Documents folder, then move any content you need into the OneDrive version. Once everything’s in OneDrive, delete or archive the local folder and set your default save location to OneDrive under File > Options > Save & Backup.

Finally, you can clear out duplicate backups from:

C:\Users\JohnWarren\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote\16.0\Backup

Let me know if this helps or if you’d like more guidance, I’m happy to help!

Warm regards,

Edward