Forum Discussion
OneNote Searching (Indexing ?) Problem (Bug)
This seems to be some sort of bug in the OneNote Search feature (or maybe me).
[By the way, I LOVE the Search feature - OneNote is rather useless (for me) without it.]
My research into the problem leads me to believe it has something to do with Indexing.
Anyway, anything I enter into OneNote now (except for the Title) cannot be found by the OneNote Search feature. My recent problem is in searching for a name (Scott). Search can find old entries with the name Scott and can even find a Scottsdale entry - and Search can find Scott in the Title of a recent entry but cannot find any of the other recent Note entries with Scott in the body (3 of them as a test).
I also note that if I manually go to the page with a recent Scott entry, the word Scott is highlighted - but the Notes' containing Scott in it does not appear in the list of notes containing Scott.
My OneNote file is huge, probably hundreds of notes (if not thousands) and the Search feature has always worked flawlessly, until now. Can OneNote get too big for Search to work? I really need this feature to work - anyone know what is going on here.
ron in shawnee
Replying to my own post - BUT I FIXED IT! - BUT now have other problems.
Here's what I did.
First - Backed up OneNote (which I don't fully understand where, how that works)
Next - Found the Onenote location - then closed Onenote
Next - deleted all of the files in the Onenote cache
Next - Brought OneNote back up - and it came up EMPTY (with Errors)Jacked around with the Open Backups - AS WELL AS trying to use a New Notebook location
(where I had copied my Notebook files on the advice of another post).Anyway, I finally got Onenote back up and the Search function is now working and picking up recently added notes (which was the original problem).
However, WHERE AM I.
Onenote "Info" now shows 2 Notebooks (OneNote Notebooks 4 and OneNote Notebooks 2) - and the location shown for the OneNote Notebooks 4 is even worse
(https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=C6E59%21s0bcbd9618347485ca665bf8f3012d298&id=documents&end=()&end).
OneNote is working (well, almost - another problem with the Search dropdown list showing a full path name instead of page names) - but things are still not right.
How do I get everything lined back up (notebook names, location, etc.) - plus I have a question about the locations in the "Save & Backup" Option.
Should I open another Post for these new problems.
ron in shawnee
4 Replies
Moderator / Kidd_lp
I appreciate the response, but it did not solve the problem.
- • Limitations: Some enterprise-managed versions of OneNote (especially those deployed via Microsoft 365 with IT restrictions) may not expose the “Rebuild Index” option. In those cases, Microsoft suggests syncing notebooks fully, closing/reopening OneNote, or reinstalling the app if the index corruption persists.
Rebuilding the Index was not available in my version of OneNote and closing/reopening OneNote, rebooting, etc. did not work.
There is another post above (my post - out of order) where I explained what I did to fix the problem (deleting files in the cache), which caused other problems (created another post describing the new problem). So, I am going to see if I can mark that post as the answer with a warning that there must be a better solution, somewhere, somehow.
[AN EDIT: Whoops, now this response is out of order - the FIX is in the following post.]
However, thanks for the response Kidd - still don't really understand what was going on.
ron in shawnee
Replying to my own post - BUT I FIXED IT! - BUT now have other problems.
Here's what I did.
First - Backed up OneNote (which I don't fully understand where, how that works)
Next - Found the Onenote location - then closed Onenote
Next - deleted all of the files in the Onenote cache
Next - Brought OneNote back up - and it came up EMPTY (with Errors)Jacked around with the Open Backups - AS WELL AS trying to use a New Notebook location
(where I had copied my Notebook files on the advice of another post).Anyway, I finally got Onenote back up and the Search function is now working and picking up recently added notes (which was the original problem).
However, WHERE AM I.
Onenote "Info" now shows 2 Notebooks (OneNote Notebooks 4 and OneNote Notebooks 2) - and the location shown for the OneNote Notebooks 4 is even worse
(https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=C6E59%21s0bcbd9618347485ca665bf8f3012d298&id=documents&end=()&end).
OneNote is working (well, almost - another problem with the Search dropdown list showing a full path name instead of page names) - but things are still not right.
How do I get everything lined back up (notebook names, location, etc.) - plus I have a question about the locations in the "Save & Backup" Option.
Should I open another Post for these new problems.
ron in shawnee
Reffering the guidance below:
• Rebuild the Search Index: Microsoft’s official recommendation is to rebuild the index when search stops finding new content. In OneNote for Windows 10/11, this is done via Settings > Options > Search > Rebuild Index. This forces OneNote to re-scan all notes and refresh the search database.
• Limitations: Some enterprise-managed versions of OneNote (especially those deployed via Microsoft 365 with IT restrictions) may not expose the “Rebuild Index” option. In those cases, Microsoft suggests syncing notebooks fully, closing/reopening OneNote, or reinstalling the app if the index corruption persists.
• Notebook Size: Microsoft does not state a hard limit where search fails due to notebook size. Large notebooks (thousands of pages) are supported, but indexing can take longer and may stall if the cache or sync is interrupted.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5215798/onenote-search-function-not-working
Kidd-
Thanks for the response - and frankly I am at a loss as to what is going on.
Your suggestion sounds great, but as you noted my OneNote does not have the "Search or Rebuild" option in my Options dropdown. It does have a Sync in the dropdown, but nothing there - just a checkbox to "Sync notebooks automatically".
Closing and reopening Onenote doesn't work - and I have even tried rebooting my system. Nothing is working - Search still cannot find words in recently created notes.
And I updated the 365 stuff - and supposedly Onenote was updated as part of that update.
So not sure where to go from here - except OneNote is now practical unusable to me for any updates - or rather for any NEW additions - but all of the old stuff is still there and Searchable - and Onenote itself seems to be working fine. Hate to quit making new entries in OneNote.
Would still appreciate any other suggestions.
ron in shawnee
