Using Emojis in OneNote Notebook Name cause Sync Issues

2026-09-20 09:28

I'm used to having different notebooks open at the same time, and each of them had an emoji at the end of its name. Recently, I started having issues like:

 

The OneNote would constantly display a message at the top saying the notebook sync failed or that the notebook was read-only every time I switched from one section to another. Literally every time, which introduced a delay of at least 2 seconds each time. The sections in the notebooks would constantly end up in a misplaced section in the app, while the ones in the actual notebook would be empty.

 

The OneNote would "open" the notebook but display all the sections grayed out. If I tried to open them, it would say that another device editing the section was still uploading and that I needed to wait. Oh, I waited... days, and still had the same issue.

 

This was the only one that apparently didn't have an issue opening my notebook, but the caveat is that it limits you to a single notebook open at a time, and you cannot easily move sections between them. This along with any other known limitations the web app has. But hey, at least I was able to retrieve my info this way.

Solution: