OneNote does not sync

Anonymous
2016-08-11T10:45:46+00:00

Hi there,

This morning I started to have problems with OneNote 2013. First I got an error saying that one notebook (stored in OneDrive) could not sync: "We're sorry, something went wrong during sync. We'll try again later. (Error code: 0xE4020017)"

The errors were associated to a particular section. Following: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Fix-issues-when-you-can-t-sync-OneNote-299495ef-66d1-448f-90c1-b785a6968d45, I tried to open that notebook in OneNote online. That worked although I could not open the section. Then I copied all the pages in that section to a newly created section. This did not help either. now two sections could not sync. Then I decided so sort the pages in that section and distributed (moved) the pages among various notebooks and sections. Now several of my notebooks cannot sync..... :-(

Finally I decided to close the notebook but now I cannot re-open it. it looks like all the data is still in OneDrive but i cannot sync the notebook to my local OneNote 2013 (windows 8) and also not to my ipad. 

This is quite frustrating. anyone with a suggestion/solution to my problems?

Thanks,

Raul 

PS: after moving various pages around i ended up with several empty sections. I deleted these sections from various notebooks but these sections keep on re-appearing after a few secs.... :- S

EDIT: I just noticed that there is something wrong with several of my notebook files stored in OneDrive. I wanted to make a back up of my notebooks by copying them to another location in OneDrive but the problematic notebooks cannot be copied... I hope that I did not loose any important file. I would appreciate receiving help from the Microsoft community to fix my issues. Thanks!

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-08-11T20:19:58+00:00

    Hi Shawn,

    That is correct. If the backup frequency is high enough, people who can restore their backups may not have lost so much information. I have now increased the frequency to every 12 hours.

    I've been able to restore sections from there.

    One thing I regret having done today, is closing the OneNote on my desktop PC (via right click on title of the OneNote and then Close OneNote). This version had the sync issues (but also the most recent version of all pages), and I hoped that by closing and re-opening it, the issue would be solved. It was not solved. And I lost the local version of these sections, and the online versions are not accessible... So they are lost. The only versions I still have are in my backup files (about 2 days old) and on my iPad (couple of hours old). I have cut my iPad from the wifi, so my sections are safe in my iPad currently. On that off line iPad I can still copy pages from the corrupt sections into a newly created OneNote that will be synched online later.

    Bart

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-11T20:48:33+00:00

    The backup did not work for me (!). It was a week old. So I thought it was the cloud. But since you got it working maybe not?

    As for support: they are worthless. I contacted them via OneDrive (which I pay for).

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-11T21:06:10+00:00

    I have Microsoft helpdesk on the phone right now...

    Hope they can help on (any/all of) these three points:

    1. What is the root cause (so we can prevent it, or know that we are safe now)
    2. Restore a backup from OneDrive (do they take backups?)
    3. Give a step by step description of how to rescue data when the issue occurs.

    Bart

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-11T21:12:17+00:00

    Having the same problem as well... Work related notebooks shared by my team have just bricked.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-08-11T21:17:22+00:00

    I want to know how to fix it. I still get sync errors after doing the standard work-arounds, just like the original post. It fails even when using my backup!

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