Windows 10: OneNote Notes created in past 1 or 2 weeks deleted when I deleted all cache

I was having issues with sync not happening and got some errors while trying to sync. I think I followed one of the below 2 articles and went to "%AppData%\Microsoft\OneNote\16.0" and deleted entire cache from there. There was some 3GB of cache which I deleted. I am on Windows 11.The sync started working shortly after but I see most of the notes which I had created in the past 2 weeks are totally missing.Is there any way I can retrieve the data or is it lost totally?There are no words to pen my frustration right now coz I feel I am screwed.I feel that here onwards I should create notes in OneN

:)

 

OneNote Delete

Thanks guys,

I tried the cache thing, but when I ran OneNote /safeboot, it just opened the program with no option to clear the cache. I was about to reinstall both versions of OneNote, but decided to have one more look.

I was still concerned about deleting the cache folder, so I read this page, which gave me the impression the world wouldn't come to an end if I did:

Where is the OneNote cache location? How to clear the OneNote Cache?

After a restart, that got rid of any data or pages associated with the left over notebooks. But they were still showing up, even though they were greyed out. I found a YouTube video about deleting notebooks:



At the 2:30 mark, the author pointed out that the notebooks have to be closed. After all that, the old notebooks were gone.

So, here's the process, as I understand it:
-turn off sync for the notebooks
-delete the notebooks on the local drive and/or OneDrive (check any location where they might exist)
-open settings > Save and Backup. Note the location of the cache file. Close OneNote. Navigate there and delete the cache. Also delete backups. It won't delete any existing notebooks and I suspect the cache will be rebuilt and backups will continue to be created.
-restart OneNote. Right click on the dead notebooks and close them (yes this is necessary)
-go to the recent list and delete the dead notebooks

I'm an MS fan, but Microsoft should be embarrassed. How many people would be using Office if it took that kind of effort to delete a Word or Excel document.

I know this is verbose, but hopefully it will help others.

Graham

 

Deleting OneNote pages

To delete a page from OneNote you can follow the below steps.

• In the "all pages" view find the page you want to delete
• press and hold on the page
• And press the "delete" option shown

OR

• Open the section having the page to be deleted.
• press and hold on the page which needs to be deleted
• And press the "delete" option shown

Hope this helps.

 

OneNote Delete

See this info: https://www.techwalla.com/articles/h...-onenote-cache