Manually Copy, Move or Export OneNote

Manually Copy, Move or Export OneNote

by Conrad Murray, 13th January, 2026

In some circumstance during a tenant-to-tenant migrations, we have occasionally seen OneNote that don’t migrate correctly. This could be for a multitude of reasons, perhaps they were legacy OneNote stored outside of OneDrive or they had not sync’d from the user’s device. Here I will explain how you can copy the content manually if the migration will not succeed in a timely fashion and you need a tactical workaround ASAP.

OneNote are In OneDrive for Business

Typically, the default 1^st OneNote Notebook is seen in the root as a shortcut and named “FirstName @ Tenant Name”

This correlates to what you see in OneNote itself

Migrated OneNote

Something to be aware of, migration tools migrate the OneNote “as is” so the title of your migrated OneNote might be confusing, because it will appear in the TARGET tenant as the same name as the SOURCE tenant and you will have two. So when you are looking for your migrated content it will be counter intuitive.

Manually Export a whole Notebook

Make sure you are signed in at OneNote to both the Source and Target tenants.

Open the “other” tenant OneNote – Source if you are connected to target

Ensure you are toggled to the Tenant you want to copy IN TO (i.e. your target)

Right click the root of the Notebook and select Properties

Choose “Save a Copy”

Give your Notebook a meaningful name

Copy

If you prefer, you can just Copy Sections directly into your target OneNote. Again be sure you are toggled to the Tenant you want to copy IN TO (i.e. your target)

Find the Section you want to work with, right click, and choose Move or Copy. We would recommend Copy so that the source remains intact.

Choose the root

Export

Whilst Export is an option, it will create .one standalone section files that are not ideal so would NOT recommend using this option.

OneNote file Structure

OneNote notebooks in Microsoft 365 are not files in the traditional sense.

Microsoft OneNote stores notebooks as a collection of proprietary section and index files within SharePoint Online document libraries, where OneDrive and Teams expose only logical links to the notebook while the OneNote application manages all data access, synchronization, and consistency.

They are logical containers whose actual data is stored as a collection of files inside SharePoint document libraries, with OneDrive and Teams merely providing links and access surfaces, not storage.

All modern OneNote notebooks (OneNote for Windows / Mac / Web) are stored in SharePoint Online document libraries

This applies whether the notebook was created from:

OneDrive
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft OneNote itself

What you see vs what actually exists

In OneDrive:

A OneNote notebook icon
Looks like a file
Behaves like a shortcut

In Teams:

A “Notebook” tab
Appears embedded in the Team

What actually exists

Behind the scenes, the notebook lives in a SharePoint document library, as a folder-like package (but not a normal folder) containing multiple proprietary OneNote data files

Inside SharePoint, a OneNote notebook appears as:

│

├── Open Notebook.onetoc2

├── Section 1.one

├── Section 2.one

├── Section 3.one

└── (hidden metadata files)

Key points:

.onetoc2 = table of contents / index
.one files = individual sections
Pages are not files
Page content is stored inside section files

Files are locked and transaction-managed by OneNote.

Copy OneNote, Export OneNote, Microsoft 365 Migrations, Move OneNote, Notebook, Office 365 Migrations, OneDrive, OneNote, OneNote Sections

Conrad Murray

Conrad Murray is a Microsoft Certified IT consultant working in IT for over 20 years specialising in the Messaging arena and in particular Office 365 and previously Microsoft Exchange On-Premises and IBM Domino. Working with like minded colleagues now delivering very large scale complex migrations from Office 365 to Office 365 (tenant to tenant), Lotus Notes and On-Premises Microsoft Exchange to Office 365.