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
    2017-09-06T19:15:47+00:00

    Your only option that I have found is to install OneNote 2010. If you kept your office365 installers from Office 2010 then you can install just OneNote from this package. That has been the only fix i have until Microsoft fixes this  bug.

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  2. 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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  3. Anonymous
    2017-03-16T15:37:36+00:00

    Hi,

    I had the exact problem described by ECEcoMel asked on  March 9, 2017. I have "Microsoft OneNote Home and Student 2016 - en-us" desktop version. Below is what I tried with NO LUCK:

    1. Both Partial and Full Repaired by right-clicking the "Microsoft OneNote Home and Student 2016 - en-us" at Control Panel->Programs and Features and select change. It notified that my Office application is successfully repaired. But alas! same problem exist
    2. This problem happens in a password-protected 'page' within password-protected 'section'. Other pages within that password-protected section don't have this issue. I tried removing and adding the password again. Same problem persists.
    3. I'm planning to run Windows Update and see if that resolves the issue. I'll let you know once I get success by this step.
    4. Several times closed and opened the OneNote application, still problem persists
    5. As somebody mentions, if you toggle between other sections and this problematic section, it would work normally for sometime, but not permanently. Copying and pasting from other application to this OneNote page works

    I suggest Microsoft to release a fix for this ASAP as I'm an avid OneNote user and this issue is killing my productivity big time. Hope, the MSFT Tech Community is listening. If I don't get the solution is soon, I need to rope in MS Office Leadership team via Twitter and Facebook to get some traction on the resolution.

    Thanks in anticipation!

    Today's update from my yesterday's post. After following all the steps mentioned above and not having any success, I followed Brian Cab's (Microsoft Forum Moderator) suggestion, I ran the Windows Update, updated, restarted and then run the System Scan at command prompt 'sfc /scannow' that resulted in "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations." message. Bottomline - I have tried all the steps mentioned in this forum discussion, but still the problem persists.

    @Microsoft, Please release a bug fix or suggest workaround soon.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-03-13T17:51:49+00:00

    I'm having same issue as well starting today. I'm using a OneDrive synced notebook. I don't have it password protected through OneNote.

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