Missing OneNote Files After Installing Office 365

Sasha100 · 12 Feb 2023

I am in serious trouble with my wife!! I uninstalled Office 10, using Control Panel Programs and Features, the installed Office 365.
Everything seemed to work out fine. The files for Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint were all there. I never use OneNote, but my wife uses it extensively, and this morning she tells me there is no files. I thought perhaps that there was a 'connection' issue of some kind, so I went to 'Documents' (we don't use OneDrive) and found that all the file folders were there for OneNote 2010, but there was nothing in the folders. I did a search on the computer for OneNote and got back many results but none that were my wife's files for the past 10 years. Does anyone have an idea on what I can do to resolve?

I use Windows 10.

Berton · 12 Feb 2023

If there's been no backups made it may be impossible to recover the files. Also involved with the issue would be which OneNote was used, the one that came with Office or the one that comes with Windows and if both their files were stored in the same location.

Sasha100 · 12 Feb 2023

Hello Berten:
There have been no backups since I installed Office 365. I had Office 10 installed originally, along with the other programs in Office 10. Like I said, I uninstalled Office 10 and installed Office 365 Family. The Office 10 version that I had was stored in 'Documents' and my wife used it regularly. Everything else woks fine.

Berton · 12 Feb 2023

The default Save as for the Windows version is also C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\Documents. But one can usually specify a different location. In the left column/pane of File Explorer any folder mentioned between Quick Access or on Win11 Home and This PC are shortcuts to those in C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\, can right-click any one to verify that. Also some between This PC and the C: drive.

EDIT: Two things, one is my Microsoft Office OneNote 2013 is set to save to OneDrive and I didn't get this image included:

Missing OneNote Files After Installing Office 365-screenshot-2023-02-13-093837.jpg

Sasha100 · 13 Feb 2023

Hi Berten:
My OneNote files are supposed to be saved in: C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\Documents, but since the OneNote that I'm looking at is the new Office 365 program -- there is nothing there. They got wiped out on installation! I did find the backup file at: C:Users\USERNAME\appdata\local\microsoft\onenote\14.0\backup. The problem is, I can't copy to OneNote at this point because the backup file is all the data from all the different sections and subfolders that my wife had in OneNote. So I'm thinking that I just copy over all the backup individual file to one folder and then my wife can go in and: a) create new subfolders, and b) the move over the files to the subfolders that she creates. That will take her forever because she had a TON of stuff in OneNote.
Thanks for your help in finding the backup location. Appreciate it.