One Note Storage on macbook

H, Claudia 0 Reputation points
2026-05-16T01:52:50.58+00:00

One Note is taking a lot of storage on my macbook although I have closed the old notebooks and I am hoping to have these old notebooks to be on my "cloud" instead of being stored on my macbook. How do I ensure only the current/relevant notebooks are taking my macbook's storage?

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | Other | MacOS
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  1. AI answer

    2026-05-16T01:53:01.13+00:00

    To keep only current/relevant OneNote notebooks using storage on the Mac and move the rest effectively to the cloud, use these steps:

    1. Make sure old notebooks are fully in the cloud
      • Open each old notebook in OneNote for Mac.
      • Let it fully sync to OneDrive or SharePoint Online.
      • In OneNote, select Share for the notebook and open it in a browser (OneNote for the web). If the latest changes appear there, the notebook is safely stored in the cloud.
    2. Close old cloud-based notebooks on the Mac Closing a cloud-based notebook and restarting OneNote removes its local cache from the device while keeping it in the cloud.
      • In OneNote for Mac, click the Show Notebooks button.
      • Control-click the name of the notebook to remove from the Mac.
      • Select Close This Notebook.
      • Quit and restart OneNote for Mac so the local cached copy is released.
      This ensures those closed notebooks remain only in OneDrive/SharePoint and no longer occupy local disk space.
    3. Keep only active notebooks open
      • Leave only the current/relevant notebooks open in OneNote for Mac.
      • OneNote will cache content for open cloud-based notebooks locally; closed ones will not be cached after restart.
    4. (Optional) Reduce sync size for large content on other devices If also using OneNote on Windows 10, OneNote 2016, or iOS, it is possible to limit automatic download of files and images so that new or large notebooks use less local storage:
      • OneNote 2016: File > Options > Sync > clear Download all files and images.
      • OneNote for Windows 10: Settings and More > Settings > Options > turn off Sync down all files and images.
      • OneNote for iOS: follow the guidance in Sync large notebooks more quickly in Microsoft OneNote.
      Note: This setting only affects cloud-based notebooks and does not remove already downloaded content; it just prevents automatic downloading of all files and images going forward.

    If any notebooks are stored only locally on the Mac (not in OneDrive/SharePoint), they must be moved to the cloud or deleted to reclaim space. Local-only notebooks do not benefit from the close-and-cache-removal behavior.

    References:

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