Location of OneNote notebooks (not-synced)

Question

I have four notebooks on OneDrive that I use with OneNote 2016.

I disabled automatic syncing.

When I encountered an error and couldn't boot W10, I created a backup of the entire drive and chose to reset the PC with the option Keep my files. After the reset, I reinstalled Office, but found that the newly installed OneNote 2016 only showed the default Quick Notes notebook. I connected my Microsoft Account, and OneNote synced with OneDrive with the result that OneNote shows the version of the notebooks stored on OneDrive – and not the up-to-date versions on the PC before the reset.

How do I retrieve the notebooks?

I don't know where OneNote stores the notebooks that are not yet synced. Keep in my mind that I also have the drive backup if helpful.

Answer 1

OneNote stores the notebooks that are connected with OneDrive offline in the folders "cache" and "ServerListings" from C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote\<ver>, but resetting W10 wipes the C:\Users\<user>\AppData folder.

To restore the notebooks, replace those current folders with the equivalent folders from the backup.

NOTE: For others who didn't do a backup, you might be able to restore the notebooks from C:\Windows.old.