OneNote - Running Slow

[Venderious]

I've been using OneNote for the past few years. Lately, it's been running excruciatingly slow. During typing, the program sometimes freezes, or lags extremely. This is annoying as I'm typing faster than that words are showing up in OneNote.

I've tried dividing my subjects in multiple notebooks, and closing some, to not take up too much RAM. However, it still appears that after some time OneNote runs slow.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I rely on OneNote for my lectures in university.

 

[sracer]

I've been using OneNote for the past few years. Lately, it's been running excruciatingly slow. During typing, the program sometimes freezes, or lags extremely. This is annoying as I'm typing faster than that words are showing up in OneNote.

I've tried dividing my subjects in multiple notebooks, and closing some, to not take up too much RAM. However, it still appears that after some time OneNote runs slow.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I rely on OneNote for my lectures in university.

To help isolate what might be the problem, try disabling network connectivity... wifi (and hardwired if you use it). I have found that OneNote's constant syncing drains the battery on my mobile devices (to the point that while in a meeting, I put my iPad in airplane mode so that it will only sync when airplane mode is disabled). I've seen this behavior on my Macbook Air as well.

 

[Venderious]

I do watch live lectures though. I wish there was a way to keep WiFi on, but limit syncing to fixed intervals.

 

[Benz63amg]

When was the last time you did an update via the AutoUpdater for Office? Which version of onenote are you running? What MacOS system are you on?

 

[Venderious]

When was the last time you did an update via the AutoUpdater for Office? Which version of onenote are you running? What MacOS system are you on?

I used to have OneNote via the Microsoft website. However, I tried changing to the App Store version. Both seem to have the same issue. I'm running MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 on a rMBP mid-2014 (i5, 256, 8gb ram). The OneNote version is 16.42.

 

[Gregg2]

I use OneNote for Windows at work. Often, our tech guy has checked with MS when it's running slowly, and is told that it is an issue on their end, due to having so many users at once. So, it might not be your Mac.

 

[Venderious]

Issue seems to disappear when I do not insert PDF Printouts (of lecture slides). However, I do need these lecture slide in OneNote. I have tried reducing the size of the PDF, but that does not work. Only the Web version of OneNote seems to run normally for me. But I want to use it natively.

 

[Hiredgoon6]

I have this problem too with inserted PDFs. Constant beach balls and words appearing 5 seconds after being typed. OneNote has always been slow on MacOS but has gotten even worse starting November. It's basically unusable right now.

Luckily, I have an iPad and have no issues on iPadOS version.