OneNote orphaned/ghost notebook reference

Question

OneNote orphaned/ghost notebook reference

Julian Hawkins 0

The notebook was deleted years ago and no longer exists in OneDrive.

It does not appear in OneNote for the web or Microsoft 365 Search.

It appears in OneNote on Windows, Android phone and Android tablet.

In OneNote Windows, File → Open → Recent → Remove from list removes it for approximately one second, then it automatically reappears.

I cannot remove the file.

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Answer 1

Hi @Julian Hawkins

Since the notebook no longer exists in OneDrive or OneNote for the web, but the same ghost entry appears across Windows and multiple Android devices, this is unlikely to be just a corrupt local OneNote cache.

OneNote maintains a Recent Notebooks list tied to the signed-in account, and Microsoft documents removing notebooks from that list separately from deleting notebooks.

The important clue is that Remove from list works briefly and the notebook immediately returns. Combined with the same entry appearing on multiple devices, that suggests the stale reference is being resynchronized from account-side OneNote metadata/history, rather than from the deleted notebook itself.

First, sign out of OneNote on one device, close/restart OneNote, sign back in, and test again. Do not manually delete OneNote cache folders, especially if you have any notebooks with unsynchronized changes.

If the entry continues to repopulate across devices while OneNote for the web and Microsoft 365 Search confirm the notebook no longer exists, I would report it through OneNote → Help → Feedback or Microsoft Support as an orphaned account-level Recent Notebook reference. Include the notebook name and the fact that removing it causes it to reappear immediately on Windows and Android.

At that point, there may be no client-side file left to remove. Microsoft would need to investigate the stale notebook metadata itself.

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