I have an iPhone and Windows Phone, and use OneNote on the web as well. Syncing to the iPhone and Windows Phone was working fine; two weeks ago sync to both phones stopped working. On the web, I can see all my OneNote documents fine. I haven't changed any settings on my Microsoft account nor on the two phones. I am not making huge changes to the content which would lead to conflicts.

The error on the iPhone is "Can't sync section: Quick Notes (Error 0xE00001AE)" and on the Windows Phone is "We can't complete this task. Try again. Error code: e00001ae".

On the iPhone I have deleted and re-added the Microsoft account, whereafter it synced exactly once, before having the same problem again.

On the Windows Phone, I cannot delete and re-create the Microsoft account (can only delete other accounts such as Google) and I cannot delete and re-add the OneNote app (seems to be part of Windows, cannot delete it).

On the Windows Phone I went to Settings -> Applications -> Office -> Reset Office. Now all my notes are gone from the phone, but it still won't sync, with the same error.

What can I do to debug this problem or resolve it?

  • Were you editing the same OneNote document on multiple devices at the same time? – Rowland Shaw Oct 13 '16 at 13:22
  • I wasn't making any changes on the iPhone, I'm sure of that, and the iPhone doesn't sync now too, with the same error. Maybe I was on the Windows Phone, I'm not sure, now I've reset Office on the Windows Phone and all notes are gone, so I think any "conflicts" should have been resolved, and I'm still getting the error, so I think conflicts are not the reason? – Adrian Smith Oct 14 '16 at 16:31

The solution I went for, which is hardly really deserving of the word "solution", is that I realized that OneNote has the structure of

Notebooks -> Sections -> Pages

Synchronization happens independently for each Notebook. So I

  1. created a new Notebook in the web
  2. created new pages there
  3. copy/pasted my content across

Of course the formatting was messed up, the history was gone, but the content was there, and the new notebook synced.

I just left the old notebook abandoned, unable to synchronize still to today.

If there were any other note taking app for Windows Phone (e.g. Google Drive) then I would happily use it. OneNote has great UI on Windows Phone, but if it can't synchronize, then it's useless.

  • FYI, you should be able to simply copy the entire pages, rather than the content. At the least that should preserve formatting. – Indrek Nov 6 '16 at 17:10
  • @indrek, thanks for the tip, that would have been great, do you know how to do that? I tried right-click "copy" on the web onenote, then going to the other notebook, then right-click in the column listing the pages but "paste" was greyed out, there was just "new page". – Adrian Smith Nov 8 '16 at 15:07
  • Interesting, it worked fine for me - right-clicking in the page list and selecting "Paste". Perhaps it's a browser issue? I use Edge myself. You could also try one of the OneNote apps. – Indrek Nov 8 '16 at 17:25

A user with a same problem has posted a solution that worked for him. You could try this too. I have performed some edits on his answer to suit your case.

Ok, I have performed following steps to fix the problem:


  1. Save/backup every page within my only note book.
  2. Delete every page from note book.


  1. Open OneNote App.
  2. Login with the Microsoft account.
  3. It successfully sync and open the empty note book.
  4. Do the same on Windows Phone.


  1. Create all pages within the note book from backup.

Android:iPhone & Windows Mobile

  1. In OneNote, "Sync All" (standing at note book level).

Now, everything working fine again.

Note: I am very careful now in operations like rename/delete, i.e. I am trying to make sure that I sync it after each major operation. Thanks.

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