Manually back up your notebooks

OneNote automatically saves your notes while you work, but we recommend backing up your notebooks regularly. If you back up your notebooks, you can restore them if you need to.

1. Open the OneNote app.
2. Go to File, then Options.
3. In OneNote Options, choose Save & Backup.
4. On the right, under Save, click Back Up All Notebooks Now.
   
   
   
   
5. When you see the notice that the backup is successfully completed, click OK.

If you want to use the backup feature to archive important notes over time, make sure that newer backups don’t overwrite older backups. You can set these options by adjusting the Number of backup copies to keep in the Save & Backup settings.

Restore notes from a backup

If you back up your notebooks before you lose or delete important information, you can restore notes if you ever need to.

1. Open the OneNote app.
2. Click File, then Info, then Open Backups.
   
   
   
   
3. In the Open Backup window, double-click the folder of the notebook you want to restore, select the notebook section you want, and then click Open. OneNote now displays the Open Sections area, where you can review the pages in the section you just opened from your backup files.
4. To restore notes, do either of the following:
   
   • To restore the entire backed-up section, right-click its section tab and then click Move or Copy.
   • To restore only specific pages from the backed-up section, right-click the page tabs you want and then click Move or Copy.
5. In the Move or Copy window, select where the backed-up section or pages should be placed, and then click Copy.
6. When your notes have been restored, right-click the backed-up section and click Close.
7. Re-select your original notebook from the Notebooks list to continue working in it.

NOTE: When you’re restoring notes from a backup, the Move command in the Move or Copy window won’t be available. This prevents you from ever accidentally deleting any parts of a backup that you might need again later.