OneNote 2010 can't connect to Windows Live

Anonymous
2011-02-03T05:25:54+00:00

I have Office 2010 which is updated on my Windows 7 {64bit} on my computer. The OS is updated too.

I bought a Windows 7 phone {Samsung Focus} and I created a Windows Live account plus I installed Live Essentials on my computer. If I'm correct, I need to use Skydrive to sync OneNote between my computer and phone.

The problem is that OneNote can't connect to Live. I've been trying for days. I have 6 notebooks in OneNote. I choose to share on the web, the web location is Windows Live. After the pop up of contacting server comes up I get the message " Unable to connect to Windows live. Below this there is just the icon "Share Notebook" which is grayed out.  I've tried this with all of the notebooks. I have tried this while my Live account is open on the browser. As I understand a login window should pop up, however this never pops up. OneNote on its own is deciding to locate and log on with the credentials.

I'm going crazy over this, any help is appreciated!

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2014-04-02T15:07:51+00:00

I have figured this out, after trying all the things above.  It came down to one thing, two-factor authentication.  If you have this enabled, to sign into OneNote on your PC you have to use your App Password, not your actual password to your Live account.  So log into your Live account, Click on Security Info, and then click create a new app password.  It will then display the current, or new, app password.  Now use that password that it gives you in OneNote and everything should sign right in.  Now I am able to sync all my files from OneNote to my phone without any issues, without messing with IE settings, and all that other stuff.

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Anonymous
2011-09-04T00:42:34+00:00

Hi There,

Not sure if you have resolved this issue yet!

I recently had the same issue on my Windows 7 64-bit pc, when I tried to connect to my Sky Drive account through One Note I was experiencing 'Can't Connect Error', Tried restarting WebClient and cached credentials this did'nt work, found out this was not related to any services but related to IE settings, by performing a reset of all settings and advanced settings this corrected the issue, I am now able to connect Sky Drive via One Note with out any problems

Martin

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-04-09T22:59:59+00:00

    I followed the advice, generated a app password, entered it, and still doesn't work...

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-04-03T20:53:38+00:00

    I see. I think when opening a notebook for the first time it would have given you an error about invalid password. Did you have notebooks synching already and then enabled two-factor auth?

    If so, was there an explicit error code shown in the UI? (the sync ui dialog especially)

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-04-03T17:06:15+00:00

    Yes - this is documented here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/app-passwords-two-step-verification in the Office 2010 section.

    This is true for most older applications using Live ID. Newer versions support the Authenticator app code.

    That page doesn't document the fact that I don't receive any error message, so I had no way of knowing the issue was related to two-factor authentication. I'll try Coleac's suggestion and see if it works.

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