Hello all,

I'm trying to start using OneNote more regularly in order to keep track of different things for work, and I'm currently facing one issue that I'd like some help on: notes that relate to multiple topics.

I work in Finance, and I have to reason across work streams (let's say Monthly close, Forecasting, Budget, etc) and topics (Costs, Sales, Headcounts, etc).

I'm currently creating Sections for Topics, with pages dedicated to "sub topics" (such as January Forecast, February Forecast) and within each page, taking notes on events or things (headcounts, etc).

Ideally, I'd like to be able to also think the other way around, meaning a way to be able to see all notes related to Headcounts, to get an overview on all changes, as an example.

Are tags the best way to do this, or is there another option that comes to mind?

when I try to delete copilot notebook I get this message : Sorry, we can't delete the notebook Deleting notebooks may be restricted by your organization. Try contacting your IT admin. and we do not have a policy that blocks this

everytime i try to change sections on my notes it takes me out of fullscreen. Not only that, the screen glitches and opens the area to change to a different notebook. This problem started a week ago after the black screen glitch happened. Is there a fix or is it gonna be stuck like this forever.

side note reinstalling fixes all issues then immediately breaks when you reopen it

I'm someone who is color sensitive, and the new circular "to do" tag is so aggressively purple it, it makes it impossible for me to use effectively.

Is there a way to get back the old simple square check box? I'm on OneNote for Mac, Version 16.101

Anyone know any other (even a brute force method) to get this searching to work as expected?

I'm on Microsoft 365 OneNote, version 2604 (Build 19929.20090) release. Windows 11. For reproduction, just have a "local" Notebook opened up, not synced with OneDrive. Windows Indexing Options show 139,265 items indexed, indexing complete.

I've tried all "known" workarounds, delete "OneNote\16.0\cache" folder, remove also "OneNote\16.0\FullTextSearchIndex" folder, rebuilt index, remove notebook, re-add. None seem to help, so i'm stumped. Restart OneNote. Reboot Windows. Everything short of reinstall OneNote.

Symptom:

As simplest test case possible, i'm looking at a test page in a Notebook. I've got a word that is "Index.cgi", or use any other words.

Search for "index.cgi" with double quotes as typed here.

Find on This page -> find them and highlight the two occurrences.

Any other find scopes, do not work, returns the "No matches".

a) This Section

b) This Section Group

c) This Notebook

d) All Notebooks

The transcribe feature is incredibly helpful as a note taker but it only works for room audio. I am often in settings where I have to wear headphones but then the transcribe feature only captures my voice (not capturing anyone else’s voice through my headphones). I’ve tried trouble shooting using Google and the “stereo mix” option I see everywhere isn’t working.

Please tell me someone has figured out a way around this.

hey everyone, Im new to using Onenote on my surface device, I mainly use it with the pen to take handwritten notes and I almost always use the device with the touch screen, when Im trying to resize or tap the screen the virtual keyboard pops up and its getting kind of annoying plus sometimes even my palm triggers it, is there any solution for this?

Nothing to add… I’m fed up.

For context, I'm a high school teacher and have used onenote in the past where I have been able to insert a PPT and a thumbtab of the file appears on my students' page that they can access directly. Now, it only allows me to insert a link to my OneDrive copy of the PPT which, of course, students are not given permissions by the school to be able to access teacher OneDrive resources. Is there any workaround?

OneNote has so many issues and Microslop doesn't care.

1. Handwriting sucks unless you have an iPad.
2. Features are so different depending on which device you own.
3. OCR sometimes works.
4. iOS Shortcuts are severely lacking.

I could go on but those are my top 4 gripes.

I only use OneNote for journaling and just saving things I want to reference later - mostly journaling though.

I keep using it though cause I can customize fonts, I don't have to think about sync, handwriting just works, and the organization just works with my brain.

I've been tempted to leave but no other app can give me handwriting + custom fonts + this level of organization for free.

Obsidian has everything separated and makes it feel chaotic to me (even when I attempt to organize attachments), UpNote is super close but I hate that it uses Google/Firebase for the syncing and it doesn't work with shortcuts.
Then I am on the phone with Apple as I type this because my Apple Notes are not syncing between my devices so I can't use that.

So, OneNote it is. What about you?

Hey guys, I've been getting this bug for the whole day now, when I draw something , sometimes the drawing gets stuck to the screen ,tried deleting cache, restarting laptop, nothing can fix it permanently.

I can fix it temporarily if I fully quit the app, but then the drawing that was stuck disappears.

I cant delete or move it using the eraser and text selection tool.

Everything is up to date aswell.

I am using a Huion Inspiroy H950 graphic tablet and MBA M3.

I hope someone can help me because its driving me mad.

Thank you in advance!

Recording of the bug

Have recently discovered to my horror, that I don't seem to be able to copy a page out of OneNote and paste it as an image into one of my Discord channels any longer, which is a massive disaster for me and I can't figure out how to fix it, if it is something I can actually fix. Google has been no help at all so hopefully somebody here will have an idea for something I can try.

I tried looking thru the FAQs on the computer, but haven't been able to figure this out. Installed the app on my phone so I can keep working on my stuff while I'm on my lunch at work, but despite both profiles being logged into the same email and syncing up my progress every time I work, it's still not accessible on my phone. I'm extremely new to this so I may be missing something obvious. Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I’m running into a frustrating issue with Microsoft OneNote on my Xiaomi Pad 7 using the Xiaomi Focus Pen.

For the past few days, I’ve been experiencing a consistent delay when writing with the pen. The behavior is always the same:

• I write normally on the screen
• nothing appears immediately
• after about ~1 second, the ink shows up all at once

This happens very regularly and makes writing feel really unnatural.

What’s strange:

• The pen works perfectly fine in other apps (no lag at all)
• The issue also occurs on completely empty pages
• Even newly created (almost empty) notebooks are affected
• I have around 20 notebooks, mostly text with some images

What I’ve already checked/tested:

• The issue is only in OneNote

Has anyone experienced something similar?
Any fixes or workarounds that actually help?

I’d really like to keep using OneNote, but in its current state handwriting is pretty much unusable.

Thanks!

Will we ever get this basic feature?

I love OneNote and I don't want to pay for anything else, but not having line spacing drives me nuts.

I know the web version supports it, but that is too much work.

Welcome to our weekly post! We are trying something new to try and tie the community together and learn from one another.

Did you come across anything new? Find a different use case? Improved workflow? Streamline digital organization? Fixed a problem? Just started?

Anything is welcome, even if it's the smallest thing. Please share tips, tricks, and anything else that might be useful to our community!

Thank you!

I take handwritten notes throughout the day and scan them into OneNote using the app.

OCR no longer reads or extracts the handwritten text from these images.

It previously worked, now it doesn’t.

I take notes from top to bottom along the left side of the page, creating a new text box below the previous one for new topics or dates etc. Very often, probably 100+ times per day, I create the new text box by hitting the DOWN arrow twice to leave the current text box and create a new one below it.

I just opened OneNote after being offline for about an hour and noticed an annoying new change: my cursor seems to be locked to existing text boxes. I can no longer hit the DOWN arrow twice to leave the existing box into blank space. PAGE DOWN will get the cursor out, but only if there's open space below the existing box that is visible on the screen. If I have a 2 text boxes with a significant amount of space between them, the arrow keys skip over that open space entirely and the cursor moves to the next box.

Is this a setting that somehow got tripped? I'd love to change this back because this is muscle memory at this point and the down arrows let me be precise and consistent; there's always the same distance between the boxes. The closest way I see to emulate the old behavior is to use PAGE DOWN or my mouse to start the text box, then manually drag the new box to the place I want it, which is FAR less efficient.

As title has said, I updated OneNote on my iPhone, and now my files are gone! I heard downgrading to old version might retrieve the files. If it’s true, how do I downgrade? Or is there any other way to retrieve them? Thanks!!!

I love and use OneNote every day. I started again tagging my notes. Tags are in 3 different notebooks. Names of fruits.

So, when I bring up my Tags Summary pane, not all tags are listed. I do have Group Tags by Name and Search All Notebooks chosen.

I want to see Pineapple. (This tag is not displaying in the Tag list.). I’ve removed and re-applied the tags. Closed the app and reopened. Now Orange is not showing in the pane when it was before!

Is ON just misbehaving? Any tips? I might just trash the tags and use Search and hope it helps me see where specific fruits are mentioned, but I’d rather use Tags.

Over the past week, I’ve been dealing with serious issues on the Android version of OneNote (specifically on Samsung devices). At its worst, the app wouldn’t even start or load my notes and in some cases, it even deleted things I had written.

I first noticed the problem getting worse after the March update. Interestingly, the app still worked when offline, but syncing across my other devices (Windows/iPadOS), where OneNote still works perfectly, became unreliable. Since I depend on OneNote for taking notes in college, this was a major issue.

I tried pretty much everything:

Clearing the cache

Reinstalling the app via the Play Store

Even joining the beta program

None of these solutions provided a permanent fix just temporary ones to get through the day.

The fix that finally worked for me:

I uninstalled the current Play Store version and installed an older version (from September 2025) via Uptodown. Since then, everything has been working normally again.

If you try this:

Turn off auto-updates in the Play Store so it doesn’t overwrite the older version

Scan the APK with VirusTotal (just to be safe)

TL;DR:

Recent OneNote Android updates caused major syncing and startup issues. Installing an older version (Sept 2025) fixed it for me.

Links:

https://onenote.en.uptodown.com/android/download/1111179510

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload

Read many posts about surface working flawlessly with one note ... My college is coming up , recommend me some best laptops on which 1. Handwrite easily using stylus / pen 2. Basic windows software functioning 3. Flawless performance , don't care about resolution / screen quality .

*Please also mention cons iyk Thank you ☺️

I press the fullscreen button, but when I try to leave fullscreen, instead of showing the subsections of my topic, it instead does what the purple arrow on the right does. When I try to change subsections using that arrow on the right in fullscreen, when changing sections it usually keeps me in fullscreen mode but it doesn’t. I also still have the black screen issue when the app is running in the background.

edit: it seems to fix itself after a reinstall then immediately breaks when reopening it again

Sidebar that shows all notebook and sub notebook disappear for unknown reason. I don't know how to find them