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The new OneNote for Windows 10 requires you sign into an account, and then saves your notebooks on OneDrive rather than locally.

Unfortunately I signed in with my university account and am scared of loosing two years of notes when I graduate and loose this account.

It is NOT possible to download the notebooks from OneDrive (at least for me) and you can copy them, but only within OneDrive.

How do I migrate the notebooks to a new account - keeping in mind they contain two years worth of notes and so are quite big.

Thank you!

N. B. the Onenote for Windows 10 is the version of Onenote released after, and intended to replace, Onenote 2016. The two programs have significant differences and therefore, older answers, for OneNote 2016 do not apply to this new version.

Mirte
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  • Note, due to differences with OneNote 2016, this question is not equivalent to https://superuser.com/questions/886227/move-onenote-file-to-another-onedrive-account – Mirte Oct 27 '20 at 17:35
  • The University account is effectively a business account (not personal) so you must ask University Support to export the Notes for you. – John Oct 27 '20 at 17:45
  • You indicated the answers that apply to OneNote 2016 do not apply to the version you are using but failed to indicate what version you are using. It's difficult for somebody with knowledge about OneNote to answer your question without that information. – Ramhound Oct 27 '20 at 22:13
  • @Ramhound, Sorry, to be clear, I am using the Onenote for Windows 10 version - it is a bit confusing, but that is what the next Onenote after Onenote 2016 is called... – Mirte Oct 28 '20 at 07:16
  • Looking at my own OneNote notebook, it appears you can link multiple accounts; you can copy your notes from one account to another. Since you have access to both accounts, you should copy your notes from your school account to a new OneNote (Microsoft Account). OneNote (today) very much is designed to store the notebooks in the cloud. – Ramhound Oct 28 '20 at 07:31
  • If that doesn't work you can download the desktop OneDrive client [here](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-the-difference-between-the-onenote-versions-a624e692-b78b-4c09-b07f-46181958118f#:~:text=The%20OneNote%20desktop%20app%20on%20Windows%20is%20part,Windows%20%E2%80%94%20including%20all%20editions%20of%20Windows%2010.) and export your notes. However, you are able to copy notes, with OneDrive for Windows 10 client (but are unable to export it). – Ramhound Oct 28 '20 at 07:33
  • @Ramhound, Thank you for the advice. My notebooks have many, many sections, so copying them over to a new notebook will take a very long time. I will try your second option and get back to you. – Mirte Oct 28 '20 at 08:12
  • Your limited to the functionality of the client, to my knowledge, the client doesn’t download a flat file that be imported at any point (which means exporting or copying is your only option). – Ramhound Oct 28 '20 at 08:47
  • So I can't export the notebooks, this isn't an option. I suppose that I will therefore have to copy all sections across when the time comes. Thanks for the help. – Mirte Oct 28 '20 at 18:56
  • Have you tried [this](https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/export-and-import-onenote-notebooks-a4b60da5-8f33-464e-b1ba-b95ce540f309) MS help file? It covers all versions (including yours). – Burgi Nov 06 '20 at 20:41

2 Answers2

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From the "old" account, share the OneDrive folder containing the OneNote notebooks to the account you want to move them into. Then login into the "new" account and copy the content of the shared folder to a folder of the new account.

addanc
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  • Hi, unfortunately this is impossible to do - the notebooks can be shared, but not copied, thus when I loose access to the account, and sharing, I would not be able to access the notebooks from my private account. – Mirte Jun 02 '21 at 08:14
  • You can't share the folder containing the notebook from One*Drive*? From there I was able to copy the folder (and their content) to the new account. – addanc Jun 03 '21 at 09:06
  • thank you for the suggestion, but no, I tried this, making sure I had allowed editing, but it still told me that permission was denied to copy them. – Mirte Jun 05 '21 at 09:53
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I use OneNote for Windows 10 and had this same problem. I managed to find a solution that worked for me.

  1. First login to your new account and create/open a notebook you want to store your transferred notes.

  2. Next go to your old Notebook with all your notes. Right-click on the section you want to transfer and select Move/Copy. It should show you all the Notebooks you have open.

  3. Select the notebook you want the notes to go into and you can either select to move the notes or copy the notes over!

Hope this helps!

yeesa kee
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