MS Notebook shattered into many parts --- need help reassembling.

Somehow my MS One Note Notebook has become very fragmented. It used to be one complete notebook and now it seems to be divided into three or more parts.

Several parts are in 'misplaced sections' and others are marked as 'open sections'. I guess combining all these parts together would recreate my original notebook in its entirety. however I am at a loss on how to do this without running the risk of messing up my fractured data.

Should I copy the individual parts into a new notebook or try to copy the parts that are missing to the largest data segment.? ( The one fragment which has the most in it already?)I also located where OneNote backs up to, see attached but am mystified here in that there are many duplicate pages which have identical file titles but vary slightly in the amount of size between one and the other.along with different date stamps modification. How do I know which one to choose?
Any advice would be appreciated Windows 10 Home 1903

Hi Jacee and thank you very much for the reply and the reference to the Microsoft site. I found this extremely educational and it answered a lot of my concerns about how OneNote is structured.

One general rule of thumb I gleaned is I should turn off syncing so as to reduce the Number of moving Parts as I work on the reconstruction. Is this a good rule?

Should I copy the individual parts into a new notebook or try to copy the parts that are missing to the largest data segment. ( The one fragment which has the most in it already?)

Or, would it be better for me to Start fresh by creating a new notebook under a new name. Then I could use the backup folder information and place that in the new notebook. Does that sound like a good way to go?

One problem here is that some of the scattered sections of the notebook and some of the backed up sections of the notebook appear to have quite a number of duplicates for sections and pages.

Some of these duplicates vary slightly in the amount of size between one and the other.along with different date stamps modification. How do I know which is the best to use?

Thanks again

Hi jacee and others.

I'm still having the same problem with my Microsoft OneNote notebook. Does it look like I am moving in the right direction in my second post?

What I'm really looking for advice on where to store the pages that I want to protect and have available for the complete reassembly of The Notebook. I'm concerned that I place them in one folder for another that would only make the Reconstruction job that much more difficult and confusing for me.

In other words, I'm looking for suggestions on where I can temporarily put sections and pages I want in sort of a Sandbox situation so that I don't cause them any further harm or accidentally delete them.

Thanks in advance John

Hi Jacee,

Your idea of transferring my notebook files to a separate USB device was a good idea for me. It gave me the confidence to mess around with the structure of my notebook contents on my computer without having to worry about preserving their integrity

Mess around I did, in fact to such an extent that I can't really explain how I fixed the entire issue. Suffice it to say there are many things wrong with my notebook installation, including such basics as where my personal files were stored. It should have been in “documents”, but as is the case here it was an app data. Don't know how that occurred.

Normally I'd explain in detail how I fixed this in order to help others but like I said I had trouble moving rationally and logically to a solution so I won't be able to post that here. Again thanks and my notebook is back to the way it should be.

I am posting this as ‘solved’, even though I don't have a describable solution to offer the board.