OneNote 2016 Application issue with "Quick Notes" stuck loading

Besides having the same issues as everyone here, I also could not backup my Notebooks. 

My fix. I did everything here (create a new Quick Notes notebook and close it and all other notebooks). Even after doing all that it still didn't work. All these issues started happening when I upgraded to Office 365 from Office 13.

By luck I found the Quick Notes icon in the Hidden Icon section on the taskbar. Once I closed Quick Notes and then opened and closed OneNote (a couple of times) it started working-but once Quick Note restarted the issues came back, so I just shut it down right way and everything kept working. I could even backup my Notebooks. It works with all my notebooks open.  Now if I can just keep the program closed for good. It does restart on its own or when every OneNote is restarted.  Fortunately,  I don't use Quick Notes much, but not being able to backup my NoteBooks, my life, was a big issue.

Hi Kentaro, I'm not Carlos but I am experiencing the same problem and can give you my own information.

I'm using notebooks (that have always been) stored on OneDrive on a fresh installation of OneNote 2016 32bit v16.0.7070.2028 and Windows 10 Pro v10586.494

The problem happens irrespective of the contents of the quick notes section. It happens if there are just a few text notes there or even if the section is new/empty.

1. When OneNote becomes "stuck" after going to your problematic "Quick Notes" notebook, are you still able to interact with the application (such as go to some other notebook, or click on "File" tab to let get Notebook Information?

The rest of the application works normally. There isn't any sort of UI freeze/hang.

2. Are you able to see the problematic section from browser version of OneNote?

Yes without problem, and also within OneNote 2016 itself by navigating from the notebook in the notebook tree, and not from the "Quick Notes" button

3. How many sections do you have in the Quick Notes notebook? If there's only one, it might be worth trying to create a section from the browser version of OneNote and see if the OneNote application on Windows is able to sync it and show.

I've tried using new sections and new notebooks for the quick notes section, and the problem remains the same.

4. In the screen shot you originally attached, I don't see a tab with plus '+' sign where you would normally see the sections. Were the quick note section editable on the OneNote application that you are now experiencing problem?

You are not presented with a '+' button here because it is just a "view" to the quick notes section.

Again, this problem shows only when you navigate to the quick notes section through the "Quick Notes" button. (image below). You are not able to edit the section (add/remove pages) here. If you view the section through the notebook itself it works and syncs normally.

I'm also encountering the same stuck loading... screen.

Over the years, I upgraded from OneNote 2007 to 2010 to and recently to 2016. I think when after I upgraded to 2016, the path to the Quick Notes Section was wrong, so I had to change it to "C:\Users<username>\Documents\OneNote Notebooks<my notebook name>\Quick Notes.one".

"Quick Notes.one" is 5272 bytes and has no pages.

This is OneNote 16.0.7030.1012 32-bit.

When OneNote becomes stuck, it is just that view that is stuck, everything else works fine in other notebooks, the File menu, etc.

I don't use the browser version of OneNote (my notebooks are only local).

Yes, the quick notes section was previously editable.

My guess is that you can reproduce the problem in-house by installing OneNote 2007 from scratch, using Quick Notes, upgrading to 2010, then upgrading to 2016 (or maybe skip some of the steps in between).

My guess is that this is some sort of locking issue. In other words, when the notebook is opened, it "locks" the Quick Notes section, but then when you try to access "Quick Notes" in the left-side pane, it tries to acquire a "lock" to the Quick Notes section, which is already "locked" by the open notebook. So it waits forever trying to acquire the "lock". I could be wrong, this is just a theory.