Disappearing Ink problem in OneNote 2016 + Surface Pro 3

Anonymous
2015-09-23T06:58:32+00:00

Hi,

I just upgraded to Office 2016 via the Office 365 subscription. Working on a Surface Pro 3 and Windows 10. I am mostly using OneNote 2016 to take handwritten notes using the Surface Pen.

The disappearing ink issue, (that was a problem in the OneNote 2013 edition, until it was fixed), seems to be back: parts of written stuff disappear. I was writing in OneNote 2016, and out of nowhere, parts of what I had written earlier disappeared. Though the issue is not as severe as it was earlier, when the disappearing was very frequent.

This needs to be fixed ASAP, it renders OneNote not very useful for note-taking!

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

145 answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2018-01-20T06:23:39+00:00

    I for one cannot afford to have disappearing ink which happened also to me when using One Note 2016.  Hugely frustrating and kills the reliability factor that I need when relying on OneNote.

    Good news as I found a perfect solution that has been 99.999% reliable even syncing across 6 devices!  It's name is OneNote 2013!

    Ofcourse I had to buy a Office 2013 license....but it has been worth it.  6 months of heavy note taking and only one 1 time did I have a minor issue during all of that time...and who knows....that could have been user error!

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2018-01-19T18:50:52+00:00

    I feel the same, and this is very frustrating. I spent over an hour searching this out and there are no good answers. I haven't yet tried to fully uninstall MS Office 365 and reinstall. I work with a university account and I will work with my IT to do that and post my success or failure. Anyone else find any leads on this problem?

    I bought a Surface Pro 4 for the express purpose of taking notes in session (I'm a therapist) and converting them to text. Currently this is broke and I'm extremely disappointed with lack of substantive response from MS even though this seems to be a common and highly frustrating problem.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-19T12:19:54+00:00

    This problem still persists. I will soon have to get rid of OneNote if this doesn't stop happening and I've updated everything I could.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-17T16:20:42+00:00

    Turning off automatic sync did not resolve the issue. I continue to have same disappearing and distorting ink problem.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2017-12-21T00:28:30+00:00

    I have the same problems as discussed here, on OneNote 2016 on a Surface Pro 4. Just started today (12/20/17) no issues before this. Seems directly related to automatic syncing of OneNote, the text seems to disappear and/or distort during the sync process which I'm assuming is much slower than in past. So I've turned that off for now. I'm also guessing it may relate to other apps, syncing, system issues.

    This seems to be a common bug and needs to be addressed. From what I see in these forums it has not been any where near sufficiently addressed by MS.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments