OneNote: why does this message keep coming up: There are no sections open in this notebook or section group

Anonymous
2017-05-31T20:12:42+00:00

Hello,

I have OneNote 2010 downloaded from a CD onto an upgraded Windows 10 pro -- from Windows 8.1 pro -- and it's been working okay, but for the past two weeks I've been seeing a message that states, "There are no sections open in this notebook or section group," regarding all three of my Notebooks, which in fact contain many sections, and have for years. The first time I saw the message I became scared because I thought it meant that my OneNote Notebooks' sections were all missing, with all my work and research gone, but then -- lo and behold -- the sections reappeared, usually after I synced -- sometimes, however, the syncing didn't work right away, and so I would repeatedly try it and anything else that came to mind.

This "disappearance" has happened over and over, but, again, only for the past two weeks. I don't know what's going on, and I'm a bit concerned that one day my Notebook sections might never reappear again.

I might add that I've also been seeing a message repeatedly pop up up asking if I want to upgrade my OneNote 2010, but I always decline; I don't know if this has anything to do with the "disappearance" problem.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-06-07T22:00:39+00:00

**Update 6/9 6PM PDT:**According to the OneDrive team they've fixed this issue. Please let me know if it recurs.

OneNote Engineer here: We're aware of this problem and working to get it resolved ASAP. Thanks for letting us know!

6/9: We've narrowed it down to a problem with receiving an updated authentication token from OneDrive. This results in OneNote believing you don't have permission to the sections and removing them from display.

Update 6/8: As mentioned above, if you open the notebook in Edge and restart all processes, OneNote 2010 appears to properly get the auth token and sync properly.

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-06-01T22:03:43+00:00

    Same here; I get the error sometimes 3 or 4 times in a day, started a week or so ago.  I use it on the road with no internet most of the time but still, 'poof' everything disappears and a blank notebook is facing me.  It only happens to one of my notebooks, the one I use all the time but they are all cloud files.

    My solution has been to close the empty notebook, go to File  Open  and select the notebook from the list of recent files.  Works, but then again it disappears again in a few hours... maybe it disappears when I catch some internet during my travels.  I'm assuming that's the case because I have to be online to reload it, and even my recent data is there so it must have uploaded... unless it's pulling up a local copy... which I cannot seem to find on the hard drive.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-06-01T18:46:37+00:00

    Confirmed. This workaround indeed works!  Thank you for posting this and hopefully it will help others with this same problem.

    Hopefully Microsoft will fix this issue soon.  It's a shame that there isn't an official way to report bugs/issues.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-06-01T17:55:22+00:00

    I have had this problem also for the last two weeks.  It is a pain.

    This is what I do to get everything back again.

    • Right click on on one of your notebooks.
    • Select Notebook Sync Status.
    • Click on one of the hyperlinks to take you to the website.
    • Then click "Synch All" in OneNote on your desktop.
    • All the notebooks will now synch.  Without the website open in the background they won't synch.

    Hope this helps.  It's time consuming,  Sometimes I have to do this more than once a day.  I definitely keep OneNote deskop open all day.

    Good luck.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-06-01T16:51:08+00:00

    Has there been any official word on this from Microsoft? I can't access my notes anymore on OneNote 2010.  All of my notebooks say "There are no sections open in this notebook or section group".

    Also, has anyone come up with a workaround?  I've tried forcing a manual sync with no luck.

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