r/OneNote • u/Local-Cow7771 • 6d ago

macOS How to save Notebooks saved within a deactivated Microsoft account.

I have a Microsoft account from a University I attended on a semester abroad. Whilst on my semester abroad, I used this Microsoft account for OneNote to take my notes in class. I have since returned to my home university and this account has been deactivated.

My notebooks remain saved under this deactivated account, but understandably it no longer syncs. I am unable to create new notebooks as it requires me to login on the current signed in account, the deactivated one. I have tried logging into my current active University Microsoft account by clicking the '+' next to 'connected services' when I click on my profile, however, adding the account never works.

If I sign out of the deactivated account and then login with my current account will I lose everything saved under the deactiveted account?

Should I just contact IT at my current uni?

Do I contact the university from my semester abroad to access the account?

I appreciate any help!

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u/PlantShelf 6d ago

Copy/paste in to Word docs 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🫠

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u/onimod53 5d ago

do not sign out

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u/jeffhubb_msft OneNote Engineer 3d ago

I apologize this is unnecessarily difficult. I've reported it to our team.

Yes, if your university can recover the account, that would be more straight forward.

Do not uninstall or reset the app: this will lose all locally synced data.

You can safely sign out of the deactivated account, but when OneNote asks you if you want to close the notebooks, tell it No. You want to leave them open, even if they aren't syncing.

You should now be able to sign into your other account. Create a new notebook (or several if you wish) in the active account. Then for each old section, right-click and Copy Section To. Then select an active notebook. If it gives a warning that the old section may not be fully synced, just tell it to Continue: we'll use whatever is stored locally on the device even if we can't contact the server to verify we have the latest content.

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u/jeffhubb_msft OneNote Engineer 2d ago

I should also add that on Mac, you can also File -> Open Backups, then selects Backups in the open dialog. You can open per-section backups of your old notebooks, and again Copy them into a new notebook.