How to Fix OneNote Not Syncing

Coletta Teske is a Lifewire writer focusing on consumer electronics. She has 30 years' experience writing for Adobe, Boeing, Microsoft, and many others.

To access your notebooks across different devices, they need to sync with your account. Fortunately, there are simple fixes available when OneNote isn't syncing. Below are proven solutions to get OneNote working smoothly again.

Instructions in this article apply to OneNote for Microsoft 365 but should also work for other versions.

Why Won't OneNote Sync?

OneNote stores notebooks in the cloud via OneDrive, so there’s the potential for internet connection problems, delays when collaborating on a notebook, and glitches when working on the same notebook from different devices. Unresolved bugs could be another reason for OneNote syncing issues.

What to Do When OneNote Isn't Syncing

Despite the many possible reasons for this problem, you should be able to fix this yourself rather quickly. Here are the solutions we recommend:

1. Sync OneNote manually. This will force the app to look for updates on the server, syncing any changes you've made to the notebook on your other devices.
   It's easy to do: right-click the notebook name from the column on the left, then click Sync This Notebook Now. This step is necessary if you're getting either of these error codes: 0xE000005E or 0xE000002E.
   

A manual sync is unnecessary if you have automatic syncing enabled. Go to File > Options > Sync, and check the box next to Sync notebooks automatically. Press OK to save and exit the options window. Now, the notebook will update when changes are made.

If you find yourself having to do this often, walk through the rest of these steps for some better solutions.

If your internet is to blame for OneNote not updating your notebooks, it's probably just slow. The link above provides several simple solutions you should try. However, this could be a much bigger problem; see how to fix it when there's no internet connection if that's what you suspect.

%localappdata%\Microsoft\OneNote\ 

Then, open the folder that corresponds to the app's version number, such as 16.0. From there, open cache and erase all the files and folders inside it.

If none of these solutions have worked for you, remember that you can access OneNote online for free. Working from the website eliminates most of the syncing issues that plague the desktop app.

To disable OneNote syncing, go to the File > Info. Select View Sync Status, and you'll see a list of all your notebooks. Select Sync manually to prevent automatic syncing. You can select Sync Now at any time to manually sync your information.

To delete notebooks in OneNote, log in to onedrive.live.com and choose the Documents folder. Right-click the notebook you want to remove, then select Delete.

To sync OneNote to your OneDrive account, open the notebook you want to share and select Share from the menu. Then, choose Share Entire Notebook followed by OneDrive.

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