Ever wondered where Microsoft’s OneNote stores its files on the Mac?
OneNote stores all its data in the location. “~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.onenote.mac/Data/Library/Application Support/Microsoft User Data/OneNote/“
To go to that location, open Finder.
Press Go on the Apple menu bar into Go > Go to Folder…
Or Press Shift+Command+G and paste the location below into the Go to Folder window.
~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.onenote.mac/Data/Library/Application Support/Microsoft User Data/OneNote/
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)The image below shows an example of the data stored in this location; you can copy this folder if you wish to do a manual backup.
If you have any questions, leave a comment below.
Its There , Thanks save a lot of time
How can I find a specific OneNote notebook, that I want to transfer to a new microsoft account? Do you know?
This is incredibly helpful. Microsoft threads don’t tell you where these things are!
Much appreciated (I was able to recover lost notes)
Hey, thanks a lot for this post.
What are the different files in the cache? and how do I open the bin files to recover the notebooks?
The db files are database files that store all the information for OneNote. The only way to restore OneNote is to replicate the setup on another Mac. OneNote cache files cannot be read by OneNote as a document or notebook file.
The cache must be moved to the same cache location of another instance of OneNote. This is the only way to get it working.
For me these files seem to be binary files (.bin).
Do I understand correctly that if OneNote is running on my mac, then all the notebooks that are in the cache are displayed in onenote? This means copying the cache to another Mac and looking at onenote there will not show more notebooks? I was hoping to recover some unsynced notebooks.
The reason why I think that there should still be a local backup of them is the following:
I had OneNote open and made some new notes but I could not sync. Onenote told me to log in to sync. But I was already logged in (possibly with a wrong account for this notebook). So I logged out and in again. The new notes were gone but I could still find them in misplaced sections. Upon logging out and in again (because none of my notebooks appeared), the notes were then not even in misplaced sections anymore. But since they were there the first time, I believe that there must be a backup somewhere.
OneNote is not a very well planned and executed software by Microsoft.
I would suggest going for some other OneNote alternative.