Forum Discussion
Backup for OneNote App for Windows 10
As a very rough workaround, it is possible to copy a OneNote notebook in OneDrive and store the copy untouched as a point-in-time referral to go back to.
I've not come across any issues where I haven't been able to find something I've accidentally overwritten/deleted using versioning or the recycle bin, but I agree that it would be good to have additional safeguards. Also interesting to note the O365 backup provider we use can't backup OneNote files because (they say) of limitations of the API.
I've had a look but I can't find the retention/versioning details on exactly how long changes/recycle bin items in OneNote are kept which would probably ease my mind a bit over not losing data.
Hi HidMov ,
Thanks for posting.
Are you using OneDrive Consumer, that comes with Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal, or OneDrive for Business, that comes with Office 365 for Business, SharePoint, Admin Center, etc.
There seem to be some capabilities with OneNote Notebooks in the Cloud in OneDrive Consumer (ODC), which don't exist in OneDrive for Business (ODFB). For example, you can export a notebook in ODC but not ODFB. Also, you can copy a cloud based notebook file in ODC but not ODFB.
If you're using ODFB, when you have time, please post back and let me know how you copy cloud based notebooks.
Thanks very much for your help.
Where are the data files for OneNote 10 stored in ONE Drive when the SYNC> They appear hidden . Any way to make them visible?
Thanks
I'm using OneDrive for Business in Office365. My process is:
Log onto ODFB on the web, find the OneNote you want to copy, select it and select 'copy to' at the top
On the right you can choose where to copy it to. So far as I can see, it can only be moved within the same tenant
It'll create a copy and append call it something similar. Should be a copy of the original.
Any changes in the backup aren't reflected. in the copied OneNote. Provided it's not touched, it should act as a backup of sorts. I'm not sure there is any facility to do this within OneNote itself.
For some reason I can't put images in this post, so I've attached some screenshots 🙂
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Mark
Thank you HidMov !
Thank you very much for sharing your procedure. The screenshots were very helpful. After a few tries because my library was using Classic UI, I successfully emulated your procedure.
In case anyone else wants to try this, please be aware that if your Library is still using the "Classic User Interface", as mine was, you won't see the Copy To option at the top menu. You're on the Classic User Interface if there's a black bar across the top of your web page, instead of a pale blue bar.
To change your user interface, you have to go to Library Settings / Advanced Settings / List Experience, and select "New Experience" (which is also known as Modern User Interface). When you close the browser tab and re-open it, you should see the blue bar across the top, and you will have the Copy To option at the top menu.
Also, please be aware that when you copy your Notebook to a OneDrive or SharePoint folder that is syncing to your desktop, it will create a shortcut to OneNote Online with a link to the backup copy of the notebook you created by following HidMov 's procedure. You cannot delete the ShortCut from the Synced local folder. Windows 10 won't let you. (I don't know if Windows 7 will let you). If you later delete the copy of the Notebook, the sync client will delete the shortcut from the Synced local folder. So, in effect, you can make a copy of your OneNote notebook to a different cloud based folder than the one in which it normally resides, but you cannot make an offline copy of this notebook using this procedure, so you can't archive it to offline media.
To anyone from MSFT who might be looking at this, please know that this is a patch, not a solution. While it does allow a point-in-time copy of a cloud based notebook to another cloud based location, it relies on too much user intervention to qualify for a best practice data loss prevention technique. I still urge you to enable automatic offline backups in OneNote App for Windows 10, with control over frequency and number of backups to maintain, similar to the capability in OneNote 2016 and prior versions.
Thank you.
JayFMSTechComm had a thought earlier - to help automate backing up, you could use Flow to automatically take a copy of the notebook at set intervals and rename it to the current time and date. I've done a super rough-and-ready test.
At the moment the rule points at a OneNote book, creates a copy in the exact folder and renames it with the last part using the following logic to add in the timestamp:
formatDateTime(utcNow(),'MM_dd hhmm tt')
For my test I've set it to 10 minutes to make sure it runs, but you can change the interval to whatever is most appropriate to you.It's super-simple at the moment, but I'm sure with a bit of working out you can get it so all notebooks are backup up automatically. This would take a lot of the manual work out the process I detailed earlier.Hope this helps,Cheers,Mark
