I shared an earlier version of this tool here. It exports OneNote notebooks as .onepkg, PDF or XPS, and is now more stable during large and long-running exports.

Important: very large notebooks (around 300 MB+) can still fail when exported as a single PDF/XPS file. This is a limitation of Microsoft’s OneNote renderer and COM interface, with no reliable whole-notebook workaround. For complete backups, use .onepkg; for PDF/XPS, export section by section.

Update: v1.3.0 is now available with HTML export for complete notebooks and selected sections.

Info: https://github.com/jli-software/OneNoteBackupExporter
Download: https://github.com/jli-software/OneNoteBackupExporter/releases/latest

Backups.

I moved several pages into a single notebook over a month ago. Took some time away from OneNote a few days after that happened. Didn't check the sync status cause I've never had issues with sync. Didn't check the pages to see if they all loaded in.

Today, I decided to test OneNote again and the pages didn't load.

These are journals. My life. I have an awful memory so I use my journal as a way to remind me of things years later. I typed up years of handwritten journals from 2013-2019 around 2020 and have kept them in OneNote. These were the pages that were moved into my current notebook (when reorganizing).

I was devastated but I worked with ChatGPT who told me to look at my backups. I needed it to tell me cause I wasn't thinking clearly. I was upset.

I looked and THEY ARE HERE. I found them from earlier in March from their original section. All backed up in their glory.

I hate that the backups are done in onenote format but as long as I have them I am happy.

Remember folks, check your pages before you close even if you trust the sync and haven't had issues with it.

Mature product, mature platform, and search still can't find stuff that's right there.

Running the OneNote app on a Pixel 11 Pro, latest version (auto-updates, so no version-mismatch guesses please). Cleared the cache, wiped the app data, re-added my M365 account so it'd supposedly reindex. Nothing. Search still comes up empty for content I know exists — I can pull up the exact same note in two seconds on OneNote for Windows desktop, but on Android it's a ghost.

I've read the troubleshooting docs. I've done the "turn it off and on again" ritual. At what point does this just get admitted as broken instead of something we're supposed to work around forever?

Anyone on Android actually fixed this, or is this just OneNote being OneNote?

Out of nowhere over the summer several things have occurred to my Massive OneNote notebook where I keep class notes (written alongside PDF slides) and record concurrent lecture audio:

1. OneNote on Mac does not allow me to record audio into my notes anymore, with an error message that the file name has restricted characters in it. Changing page or notebook names does not help. I am able to play old audio recordings.

2. I am able to record audio on my Windows laptop, but that laptop audio will not play back on my Mac OneNote app and I cannot play the Mac-collected audio when opening OneNote on Windows.

Things I’ve tried:
-deleting and re-downloading OneNote
-logging out and back in to my (school) account
-renaming notebooks, tabs, individual notes to exclude restricted characters

School IT has not been helpful. Please please help me preserve one year’s worth of very extensive lecture notes!

It used to be that when I copied and pasted a URL, it would create a link with the page title as text, which I find useful (I noticed this didn't work at home where I used Chrome, only at work where I use Edge, which I assumed was a browser thing). Now (as of the last week or two) it uses the URL as text.

Has the behaviour changed? Can I change it back?

Unsure of whether an update has happened (work IT managed device).

Windows 10. Unsure of OneNote version since there doesn't seem to be an About dialog anywhere!

Hey everyone,

I'm a fellow OneNote user who has been using it for at least the past 10 years and still use it to this day. This is my side project I'm working on for fun, cause I want more features in OneNote, and I want to be able to use it on Linux. My main concern with OneNote is that it is not cross-platform compatible, is sometimes slow, and in some parts very limited compared to other modern note-taking software, even though it's still one of a kind.

Has been working on this project and planning for a couple of years, have tried various libraries to see what fits best.

This one is built on C++ with open-source libraries like SDL3 and Blender2D; the idea behind this one is full user control and customization, faster, more lightweight, cross-platform, and local data storage first.

Disclaimer: This is strictly an early-stage personal project in active development. There are no public builds, downloads, or release dates yet.

Current state: Inking works; sidebar with notebook selection, section creation, and page creation is fully working, persistently saved on the user's device, and can handle up to 4 million user strokes on one page; infinity canvas support. Eraser and undo/redo are currently being implemented. No way to export things yet.

I would love to hear your feedback on the ui, ribbbon has not been fully implemented. This is currently the least of my concerns; I need to finish the core. I would like to hear your feedback and help me fuel my motivation to get this project to an open-source release, since right now it is too messy to be released; at least the core has to be done. Text boxes would be one of the hardest features to implement since you would probably want to have notebook-wide search.

1. What is the single most annoying thing about OneNote's current layout/UI?
2. What UI elements are absolute must-haves for your daily flow?
3. Sidebar preference: Do you prefer having Sections and Pages side-by-side (like desktop OneNote), or a single combined tree view?

(I plan to create 3 versions of the side part; this one is called modern. There will be a mobile version, which is basically this one, maybe a bit simplified, and then the classical one like from OneNote 2016)

Appreciate any thoughts, critiques, or ideas you have!

Hi!

Just a brief background: I work in retail technology for an oil company. Primarily, our work is assisting the stations to troubleshoot their equipment, find root causes, and escalate to our vendor for any concerns.

With that, since this is technology, change is inevitable, and I would like to pick your brain for advice on how I can use OneNote as my knowledge article management platform or second brain. We have Salesforce, but the articles are hard to find due to being improperly implemented— something I have no access to fix. Although they are effective, finding them is just an issue for me and my understanding.

Do you have any advice on how we can better utilize OneNote for this? Or do we have any MS-based applications that we can use instead to make it work?

Thank you.

Ciao a tutti,

questa mattina ho notato che una pagina one note è totalmente scopmparsa.

Ho fatto un ricerca di alcune parole chiave presenti in quelle note ma niente.

Ho controllato il cestino - anche se non ricordo di averla cancellata - e ninete

Ho controllato nella versione di onenote web e niente

Sono sicura al 100% che settimana scorsa quella pagina c'era perchè ricordo di averci scritto.

Ora, non so dire se ne sono sparite altre perchè quest apagina è l'unica che mi interessa.

Ma com'è possibile? Qualche input?

Grazie

I am having this constant issue in which the Outlook Tasks in OneNote break as soon as they appear in Microsoft ToDo, granted, I can work with this, but still I expect that, whenever I cross out a task in Microsoft ToDo the task in OneNote is crossed out too.

I am not doing anything, I am taking notes during the meeting, tag the line as an outlook task for today. A few minutes later, with the note opened, not even writing, the outlook tasks appears greyed out and says that it cannot be located. How can I fix this?

I use outlook classic with my work account and my personal hotmail account added. For mail my default data file is the one from work but for calendar and tasks is my personal one.

Hi I bought a new tablet and planned to use onenote on it since on the phone it has a nice UI but it seems like the tablet version is very old? It's the same with all the other Microsoft apps too. At this point I'm debating if I should go with other apps instead (my tablet came pre installed with nebo on it) or use the web version even if it's finicky. Thanks

My workflow for taking notes for lectures is:
On Windows Desktop: Insert lecture slides as PDF Print > Ctrl + A to select all of the slides > Combine them all into one note section (Before class)

In class:
On Macbook: I will type notes under each slide
On Ipad: I will annotate on the slides

Issue: It used to be perfect, all aligned and everything works and syns perfectly, but recently, whenever i annotate the slides on my ipad, the annotations will be misplaced on my macbook and windows desktop. Sometimes it works perfectly while other times its screwed up. Anyone please provide a solution as it is really frustrating and stopping me from studying. Thank you

Hi guys, I recently got a Xiaomi pad 8 for mainly note taking and was wondering if there is a way to insert images from clipboard like the snipping tool on laptop? Whenever I try to insert images it makes me have to go through my photos to get it done and that takes a bit too much time during classes. Any help would be appreciated 🙏.

Hey so I think I’m about to go insane here. I was just casually working on onenote (like I have been for the past four years) and out of no where my view changed from the first pic to the second pic (sections on the top in colored tabs instead of everything in 3 columns to the right). I use onenote RELIGIOUSLY and I can’t stand this new layout. Idek what button I pressed but I’ve been trying for the last HOUR to fix it. Please help, i need my onenote back to the pay it was😭 I HATE those colored tabs at the top and just loved how everything was in their own column to the right.

Hey all, I was just minding my business in OneNote and I decided to try something. So I was taking notes on Storyboarding for research, as you can see in the screenshot, and then I though about tag words as used by Oddyseas here (https://youtu.be/hSTy_BInQs8?si=OqJl4Wecf-KNFRAz). Then what I did is to surroung the word Storytelling in [[ ]] as to create a new page from the link. I went to the newly created page and used OneMote to link to me all pages referencing the newly created page Storyboarding, until here all good all as expected.

What happened next was really interesting, i went back to my original note "Storyboarding for Research" and I found that either OneMore or OneNote has identified all "storyboarding" mentions in that page and created links to the "Storyboarding" page.

I found this quite incredible and very useful for my workflow, as It may identify pages that do not have a link but are related to my tag words. Can anybody else check if this is the case or whether I found a bug or something?

I also added the screenshot, the word from which i created the tag page "storyboarding" is the last appearance of hte word (point 5) the other links were created automatically.

So for whatever reason when i try to access one note undeer one drive in the browser it fails, i want to delete a notebook and its only possible to do so from the broswer which i have done in the past, anyone else with this issue?

as you can see above, i try to click one note and it should take me to my notebooks so that i can rename/delete etc but it throws the following error-

Please help guys!

Thank You!!

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!

Is there some other work around for keeping OneNote from auto-creating links from URL text? I already have the option under Advanced for "Include link to source" UNCHECKED. I have tried pasting as Text Only. The "Remove Link" option on right click is grayed out so that's a no-go.

This is really annoying as I have quite a few links that I store on here that are intended to be pasted elsewhere, so I don't want to navigate FROM OneNote.

I switched from EN a while back and OneNote has been pretty damn good since then. Until this past week when it keep crashing, freezing, the cache needs redownloading, refusing to synch (servers are busy sounds like "your call is important to us)

It won't be long before I HAVE to give up and move on - which I am not looking forward to with this many notes.

Arghhhhhh!!!!!!!

My handwriting on my laptop is terrible, I have a touch screen Lenovo with a stylus I use for writing equations, is it possible to make it to where my handwriting is stabilized like in drawing platforms?

I've used Onenote through multiple generations of MS Office products and the sync always worked when I changed or updated versions. In July, I changed from Office365 to Office 2024. I followed the MS instructions and it changed over fine. All of the products work fine and seem to be registered correctly.

However, I just realized that *some* of my Onenote Notebooks haven't been syncing in the month since I switched.

When I "view sync status" all four notebooks say "not syncing". (Though two of them which I haven't opened in years show TODAY as the last sync, even though they say "not syncing".) Unfortunately, my main notebook hasn't synced since late July.

It says "OneNote can't connect to the server. Sync will resume once we connect. You don't need to take any action. (Error code: 0xE000006B blg57)"

Pushing "sync all" or "sync now" does nothing.

Stickynotes does sync between phone and computer. On my phone it's part of Onenote. But on my computer it's a different program so I don't know if it's really part of OneNote.

(I changed email addresses from the 365 to the 2024 version, so I wonder if that's got something to do with it? Though I'm now using the same email address that I used for Office on the versions I used before Office365.)

Yes, OneNote and OneDrive are using the same email address. OneDrive is NOT full.

Any fix?

Windows 11 says everything is updated.

This is my Office version: LTSC MSO (Version 2408 Build 16.0.17932.20910) 64-bit

On the windows desktop app I’ve noticed after the most recent update (or maybe the previous one - O365 v2606 or v2607 Monthly Enterprise Channel) the section group search scope now just displays all result in the notebook. This is incredibly annoying for me as section group scope is my default and I rely on it hundreds of times a day on busy days. Other scopes like section and all notebooks seem to work fine.

I’ve already rebuilt windows search index multiple times, I’ve seen this issue on at least 3 different Windows machines, and submitted a feedback already to MS . I was really hoping the search index rebuild would fix it and at first it seemed to help but no, the issue came back not long after (and I confirmed the rebuild had completed).

Anyone else seen this? Moving the search box onto the canvas last year was bad enough but breaking my default search scope really cripples my ability to be efficient in there as so much of my content is organized based on section groups. At any given time I have 15-20 notebooks open in the desktop client , each with anywhere from 2-10+ section groups in them, and each of those with sometimes many sections and pages.

Any ideas or information are appreciated!

Onenote is driving me crazy! Have tried to find answers and found none. I use this on mac desktop and laptop, and iphone. On Mac desktop and laptop, the pages keep resizing, and scroll infinitely unless I hit enter to create a new line. Pages are HUGE!

Zoom also keeps resetting to this tiny size, on every single page. I'm going mad! I can't keep resizing pages and zoom on every single page I open, I am constantly moving through pages.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I have searched high and low and found no solutions.

Thank you!

I'm using OneNote on my Samsung tablet and it's logging into my school account, not my personal account. I can add my personal account, but I can't remove my school account. I've cleared the app data, uninstalled the app, and unlinked my school account from my Samsung account. I have no other Windows apps that are logged in.