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

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-10-01T02:47:56+00:00

    If you are running OneNote 2016, could you try the following:

    Disable handwriting recognition by unchecking the option "Enable automatic handwriting recognition" under File->Options->Advanced

    Let me know if you see any improvements. If you are on Windows 10, please make sure to have the KB3093266 update released today (see above post).

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-01T02:44:37+00:00

    Hi

    We've released an update today for Windows 10 devices. If you are on Windows 10, please run Windows update and restart the device. The restart is required. The update should either resolve or reduce the ink disappearing issue. It will also help narrow down the cause of the issue reported here.

    The install is numbered KB3093266. It may take sometime to show up on everyone's devices.

    Article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3093266

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-09-30T20:04:06+00:00

    I was about to downgrade back to 8.1 thinking that it was a problem with windows 10 on the sp3.

    Good news though! I uninstalled 2016 and reinstalled office 2013 and the problem went away!

    It was office! not the OS!

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-09-30T16:04:57+00:00

    I found that if I move my notes out of OneDrive, OneNote 2016 performance improved immensely.  My notes were getting so big that when it gets sync'd to the cloud, it takes quite a bit of time to upload before I can use my pen to write anything.  When I moved my notes out, no syncing anymore and the program doesn't have to worry about frequently caching the notes to the cloud.

    I hope that this tip might help someone.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-09-30T14:50:20+00:00

    Reporting in for the same problem, it's killing me! I'm totally digital with my notes, and this is not something I'm prepared to deal with. It adds so much stress to note taking, checking to see if ink disappears. Please crush this with an October 2 update!

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