OneNote making my text invisible!

Anonymous
2017-03-08T20:19:19+00:00

I imagine this is some sort of bug...

OneNote in Office 365 on Windows 10 

I use OneNote for a lot of notes, including one section that is password protected. All of a sudden a few days ago, it has this very annoying glitch where the text I type is invisible.

It basically allows me to type / click check boxes, etc., but it is all invisible. As in, it creates space for the words but there is nothing there. I mostly have been using the password protected section, so I notice it there. If I close OneNote and open it back up, the previously invisible words then show up. Sometimes it lets me type regularly again, or sometimes it just makes any new text I type invisible also. 

If I press backspace, for example, the cursor moves backwards but the deleted words are still visible (until I close the program, for example).

If I switch to a non-password protected section the words are usually invisible while typing also- but if I keep typing gibberish then after a few seconds, this seems to reset and do the same thing as closing / reopening the program.

Any ideas? This is quite annoying!

Thanks!

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-03-10T02:24:31+00:00

Hello,

This issue is also occurring for me. I will type text and the cursor will move as if it is typing but the text does not appear. A short-term solution I have found is that switching to another section and then switching back to the "trouble" section then displays the text when typing.

I have tried both Quick and Full Repair.

The version is Office 365 Home Edition OneNote 2016 desktop app on Windows 10.

Help appreciated!

Thanks,

Jeff

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-06-06T11:50:08+00:00

    Josef and other Microsoft Support staff,

    Your recommendation with the onenote.uservoice.com is irritating. The mentioned behaviour of OneNote by many users in this tread is clearly a bug - if you understand what a bug means - and not a new feature request.

    This bug is not related to the used Windows operating system. It only appears on OneNote 2016 and has been introduced with the Microsoft Office Version 16.0.7668.2074. The bug was definitely not in Version 16.0.7571.2109. On 12. February 2017 I have experienced first time this misbehaviour of OneNote 2016 on my systems right after updating the office suite.

    Symptoms are as follows:

    • check boxes in a note disappear with mouse over
    • new typed text will not show up, but cursor will move or not (both is possible)
    • selected text (one word, some words, complete paragraph) can not be unselected (unmarked).

    Temporary workarounds:

    • scroll within a note (mouse wheel) or use page up/down keys
    • select another note and come back to the "problem note".

    So far any recommendation in this tread up to now does not solve the issue. I tried everything from repair up to re-installation of the complete Office 2016 suite (in my case Office 365 Business Premium).

    I can reproduce the issue on different installations (machines). However, I haven't found an exact procedure to force the problem. It may appear and then it may not appear for a couple of minutes. Mostly, it is related to the first action applied to an existing note. If the problem appears and will temporarily be "worked around" with e. g. mouse wheel scrolling, it will not happen again on the same note. If I leave the note, work on a different note an come back to the note before, the chance is high that the problem will re-appear on that note.

    It might be interesting, that up to now I couldn't reproduce this OneNote bug on a locally stored notebook. It seems only to happen on notebooks stored on OneDrive. Even if I move a note showing this strange behaviour from a OneDrive-notebook to a local notebook, the same note will not experience this problem on the local notebook.

    Maybe the issue is related to some background sync processes of the notebooks stored on OneDrive.

    Anyhow, it is absolutely in acceptable that there is not statement from Microsoft on this, now 3 months old, thread that the problem is being worked by the development team. I may add an appropriate statement on Twitter to raise visibility of this silly bug.

    Regards,

    Kurt

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-06-04T18:32:54+00:00

    Okay I just posted the following to the onenote.uservoice.com forum per your request:

    Very often (2 or 3 times per day), when I change the focus from any app such as Explorer or Outlook, to OneNote, and start typing into an existing note, everything I type is invisible -- that is, the display does not reflect anything that I type.  However, if I click on a different OneNote tab, and then go back to the tab I was in, then all of my text appears just as if I had typed it normally.

    I upgraded my machine to Windows 10 (from Windows 7) and from Office 365 Small Business to Office 365 Business about when this started happening.  I have been running OneNote on this desktop, a Dell, for 2 or 3 years with zero problems until this suddenly started happening - coincident with my upgrade above.

    I have since kept Office 365 up to date, and recently updated to the new Win 10 Creator's version, and the problem still exists.

    There is a long thread about this problem on answers.microsoft.com, with many people posting about this exact problem and with further details: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice\_onenote-mso\_win10/onenote-making-my-text-invisible/1be7a7bb-4c64-48d7-a5be-7930251ec8be

    Thank you in advance for trying to track down this bug.

    Randy

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-06-04T15:26:57+00:00

    Hi Randy,

    It seems that not all users are affected by this issue. May we suggest checking out this link. It's the OneNote suggestion site wherein you can post your concern and have the developers look into it.

    Should you have any concerns, please don't hesitate to inform us.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-06-02T16:58:46+00:00

    I want to let everyone know that I updated my machine to Windows 10 Pro "Creator's Update" v 1703 OS 15063.332, and the problem with invisible text persists in Microsoft OneNote (v 1704, build 8067.2115 click-to-run.)  

    Problem still not fixed on any of my machines, running various versions of Windows.  This is crazy.  How is this not happening to all users?

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