How to Recover Deleted Notebooks in OneNote

So long as you do this one thing

If you’ve beenusing OneNote for your important note taking, you might need to consider what happens to your notebooks if you delete them. Once a notebook is gone, is it gone forever?

The answer is complicated, but if youdelete a OneNote notebook, you can recover it in a few different ways, depending on how you’ve been using the service. To recover a deleted notebook in OneNote, follow the steps below.

How to Restore Deleted Notes in OneNote

Let’s assume that you’ve accidentally deleted the notes from one of your notebooks and you’re looking to retrieve it. If you need to recover these, the easiest way to do it in OneNote is to use the built–in recycle bin feature. This keeps a copy of your deleted notes safe, but outside of your notebook, for up to 60 days.

To be clear, this will only work if the notebook itself is still open and available in OneNote. If you’ve deleted the OneNote notebook entirely, you’ll need to try one of the sections below instead.

To restore deleted notebooks using the Recycle Bin, follow these steps.

How to Recover Closed Notebooks in OneNote

You can’t actively delete an entire notebook in OneNote itself. To prevent accidental deletion, OneNote will simply close the notebook file.

OneNote notebooks are stored as individual files using the.onefile extension. If you close a notebook, it won’t delete it from your PC or from your OneDrive storage—the file should still be there. You can open it up again and access your notes again at any point (as long as you still have the file). To do this, follow these steps.

Once the file is opened in OneNote,your notebook will sync upand appear for you to use and edit. This will include all of the sections and individual notes that it included before you closed it.

How to Use the OneNote History Feature to Restore Previous Versions of Notebooks

Notebooks in OneNote are designed to be fluid, allowing you to add, change, and remove notes and other content when you need to. However, if you’ve made changes to your OneNote notes previously, you may be looking to restore a section of your notebook from an earlier time (or the notebook entirely).

If you have an earlier copy of the.onenotebook file, you could use the steps above to achieve this. However, you can also use the built-inpage versionsfeature in OneNote to view and potentially restore older versions of your notes.

To use the History feature to restore previous versions of notebooks, follow these steps.

How to Recover OneNote Notebooks Using OneDrive

Accidentally deleted your OneNote notebook file? Don’t panic, as you may still be able to recover the file from an older version of your OneDrive history. OneDrive allows you to remove any changes you’ve made to your storage to a point within the last 30 days.

There’s an obvious downside to this, however. While you may be able to restore your deleted OneNote notebooks if you deleted them from OneDrive in this time period, you’ll lose any changes you’ve made to your OneDrive storage since that point. OneDrive will roll back any changes you’ve made.

With this in mind, consider backing up any changes you’ve made to your OneDrive storage (such as creating new files)beforeyou proceed with these steps. When you’re ready to recover yourOneNote notebooksusing OneDrive, follow the steps below.

Managing Your Notes in OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is designed to keep your notes safe, even when you make a mistake. You can use the steps above to help you recover your deleted notebooks in OneNote. Whether it’s a single note or an entire notebook that you’ve lost, restoring them should be easy—as long as you’re keeping your files backed up, that is.

Don’t have a good enough system for backing up your files? Make sure to startusing your OneDrive storage effectivelyand avoid deleting any OneNote notebook files saved to your OneDrive storage automatically.

Don’t forget about your local backups, however. You can usebackup software with your Windows PCto create a local backup of your files, including any OneNote notebooks that you’ve stored.

Ben Stockton is a freelance technology writer based in the United Kingdom. In a past life, Ben was a college lecturer in the UK, training teens and adults. Since leaving the classroom, Ben has taken his teaching experience and applied it to writing tech how-to guides and tutorials, specialising in Linux, Windows, and Android. He has a degree in History and a postgraduate qualification in Computing.Read Ben’s Full Bio

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