Restore OneNote Notebooks

Restoring a Microsoft OneNote Notebook or Section back to the source Notebook is easy once you see the steps. The trick is that Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365 preserves the Notebooks by Section (called a .ONE file). These files contain all the pages present at the time of the backup. If you only want to restore a single page, you still need the Section. Once you open the section containing your page, you can simply Copy or Move the page back to where it belongs. Similarly, entire OneNote Notebooks can be restored or moved to a new location.

These steps must be performed using one of the two desktop versions of OneNote. You can do this on a Windows or Apple computer. The main thing you need to know is which version of the desktop app you are using. Microsoft OneNote 2016 will enable you to restore entire Workbooks, Section Groups, Sections, and Pages. Microsoft OneNote for Windows 10 is limited to restoring Sections and Pages.

The video below demonstrates how to use Microsoft OneNote 2016 to return a restored and exported OneNote Notebook, Section, and Page back to the source.

Export the OneNote Content

  1. Determine which version of OneNote you are using. For Microsoft OneNote 2016 the steps are presented here. (For Microsoft OneNote for Windows 10 please refer to the detailed documentation linked at the bottom of this article.)
  2. Open Spanning Backup for Office 365 and locate the OneNote Notebook folder you wish to restore. You can choose a *.one file for specific sections and pages, or the entire folder for Notebooks and Section Groups.
  3. Export the content you want to restore to a computer running Microsoft OneNote 2016. (If you restore the OneNote content to SharePoint or OneDrive you will still need to open it in the OneNote app to restore it to a Notebook.)

Steps to Restore a Section or Page

  1. Open Microsoft OneNote 2016 and open the destination Notebook for your restore. 
  2. Right click the downloaded Section (*.one) and choose Open with | OneNote 2016.
  3. Right click the Section tab or the Page tab you wish to restore and choose Move or Copy.
  4. In the Move or Copy dialog choose the destination Notebook and click Copy.
  5. After OneNote synchronizes the Notebook you should find your restored content in the destination Notebook.

Steps to Restore a Notebook or Section Group

  1. Open Microsoft OneNote 2016.
  2. Right click the downloaded table of contents file (*.onetoc2) for the Notebook or Section Group and choose Open with | OneNote 2016. (You may receive a warning that "A Notebook could not be found..." Click Yes to open the *onetoc2 file as a Notebook.)
  3. Click File | Share.
  4. Choose the location in OneDrive or SharePoint where you wish to restore the Notebook. Provide a Notebook Name and click Move.
  5. After OneNote synchronizes the Notebook you should find your restored content in the destination Notebook.

If you need full end-to-end instructions for completing this process in Microsoft OneNote 2016 or OneNote for Windows 10 please see our guide to Restore OneNote Notebooks

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