OneNote on iPad problems, selection handles unresponsive

Question

OneNote used on iPad has the following problem:

Any selection (word or paragraph) does not extend, or the drag gesture is ignored. Cursor movement left/right or up/down is not possible after a word is selected.

this is beyond frustrating!!!

Answer 1

The issue has today been fixed with the latest Microsoft OneNote update. Hooray!

Answer 2

Hello Schewe-Miller, Irmi [CHEM]

Thank you for reposting this issue to the Q&A forum!

From what you described, I understand you're facing several issues with OneNote on an iPad, where the text‑selection handles in OneNote don’t respond when you try to select or extend text.

Several other users have reported the same behavior, so you're not alone:

OneNote for iPad: Unable to extend text selection using touch handles

Microsoft OneNote app iPad Air 13 text select and highlight issues as of 2/3/26 (Disclaimer: This linked thread is posted by a user on the Apple Support Community, not by Microsoft)

However, currently there’s no official announcement or fix available yet. In this situation, I recommend submitting Feedback directly inside the OneNote app by opening the Feedback icon in the top‑right corner of the file (as shown below) > Report a problem. This will send the issue to the engineering team so they can investigate and work on a fix.

In the meantime, please keep the OneNote app fully updated to ensure you get any patches or improvements as soon as they’re released.

If I come across any new information or updates about this issue, I’ll be sure to share it here.

Thank you so much for your time and I'm sorry for this inconvenience!

Answer 3

I have done all the suggested solutions, with no improvement.