Restore a Notebook

Saturday, June 27, 2026

1:36 PM

OneNote stores backups as individual .one section files organized in folders that mirror your notebook structure. Because OneNote has no "restore notebook" command, restoring from a local backup is a section-by-section process.

 

This page walks through a complete workflow for a full or partial notebook replacement or restore using OneMore's Open Folder as Notebook command and built-in OneNote features.

 

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Back it up!

It is highly recommended to enable OneNote backups, for both local notebooks and remote OneDrive notebooks and keep a specific number of backup files, making point-in-time recovery easier. For full disaster recovery, also copy the local backup folder off-machine to an SD drive or NAS on a regular schedule.

 

Understanding the Backup Structure

A standard OneNote backup consists of:

 

  • A notebook folder, named after the notebook
  • Section group subfolders, if your notebook uses them
  • .one files, one per section
  • A .onetoc2 table-of-contents file at the notebook root (optional)

 

OneNote's restore tool opens individual .one files only. There is no command to restore an entire notebook folder in one operation, so the steps below work around this by using OneMore's Open Folder as Notebook command then moving sections to a destination notebook.

 

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Notebooks have double identities!

When you create a notebook, you need to give it a name. This is used as the original and official name of the notebook and the name of the folder that contains the section .one files and section group folders. OneNote then lets you rename a notebook - but this only applies a nickname to the notebook. The original name is still preserved and the containing folder name doesn't change. Use the OneMoreCLI.exe GetHierarchy --books command to list all notebooks with their names and nicknames.

 

Notebook Restore

This workflow can be used to restore an entire notebook or load or replace individual sections or section groups. For simplicity, the steps below assume a full notebook restore. But you can use parts of this workflow for smaller restorations too.

 

Step 1 — Create a new empty notebook on OneDrive

This notebook will receive all of your restored sections. Give it a meaningful name so you can identify it easily.

 

  1. In OneNote, go to File → New
  2. Choose OneDrive as the location
  3. Enter a name for the restored notebook and click Create Notebook

 

Step 2 — Recreate a local notebook structure from your backups

Hopefully you've configured OneNote to automatically backup your notebooks. OneNote does not allow you to open folder directly from your backup location, so you'll need to copy the backup to another location.

 

  1. Copy your notebook backup from your backup location to a temporary location.

 

or

 

  1. Create a new folder, name it anything you want - it will be deleted at the end.
  2. Optionally, recreate the subfolder structure for any section groups you want to recover.
  3. Selectively pick backup .one files from the backups folder and copy them into this temp folder. These will have names similar to "Something (On 4-12-2025).one", where "Something" is the section name and "(On 4-12-2025)" is the date the backup was created.

 

Step 3 — Open the folder as a notebook

Use the OneMore File/Open Folder as Notebook command to open the temp folder you created in Step 2. It will appear in OneNote.

 

Sections from your backup folder have a timestamp as part of their names, for example "(On 4-12-2025)". When you open a folder as a notebook, OneMore gives you an option to remove this part of the name automatically during the open procedure.

 

Step 4 — Move each section into the new notebook

For each section opened in the previous step:

 

  1. Right-click the section tab
  2. Choose Move or Copy
  3. In the dialog, expand the temp notebook (and the appropriate section group, if applicable)
  4. Click Move. This transfers the section immediately. Copy leaves the backup section in place, which is useful if you want to verify the result before closing the backup. Either option preserves all pages within the section.

 

Repeat for every section you want to restore.

 

Step 5 — Verify sync

Allow OneNote a few minutes to sync the new notebook to OneDrive. If the notebook is large, this could take a long time. Scroll through each section to confirm all pages appear correctly before proceeding.

 

Step 6 — Close and delete the temp notebook

Once you are satisfied the restore is complete:

 

  1. In OneNote, right-click the temp notebook opened in Step 3.
  2. Choose Close This Notebook to remove it from the OneNote interface
  3. Delete the temp folder you created in Step 2.

 

Partial Restore

If you only need to recover specific sections or pages rather than the entire notebook, the same mechanism applies with a smaller scope.

 

To restore a single section, you can open a .one file directly from OneNote. This will open the section in the "Open Sections" area of your Notebooks panel. You can then copy the section to a notebook of your choosing.

 

To restore individual pages from a section:

  1. Open the .one backup file
  2. In the Open Sections area, locate the pages you want to recover
  3. Right-click a page tab and choose Move or Copy
  4. Select the destination notebook and section, then click Copy

 

Known Limitations

Sharing permissions and sync history are not preserved. After restoring, you will need to reshare the notebook with any collaborators.

 

 

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© 2020 Steven M Cohn. All rights reserved.

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