Onenote Not Connecting To Internet

30-04-2021 by



If you’re still experiencing sync problems after updating OneNote, click on the sync issue that best describes the issue you’re seeing, or scroll to the end of this article to report your sync issue to the OneNote product team. Update OneNote to the Latest Version. In the beginning, we will show you the first solution for.

Free Internet Onenote

The Synchronization Era…
We live in this era where synchronization has become a daily part of our lives. When you use office you have to sign in, when you use OneDrive you have to sign in, all for the purpose of staying synchronised. Most of the times this doesn’t cause an issue, but if you are experiencing synchronization issues a new kind of stress takes over. You start asking questions to you computer… like “I am not connected to the Internet? I am connected to the Internet!!. Why doesn’t this work?”

OneNote is no exception and from time to time users can experience a sync issue while being connected to the internet. One might encounter the message:
“We are unable to connect right now. Please check your network and try again later.”
I have seen a lot of people encountering this message and the following tip might just solve the issue for you if you encounter this issue. Be aware though this is just one of the solutions that could solve the issue, it is not the solution to all your synchronization problems!

Take the following steps when you encounter the above message: (PC – steps)

  • Open Control Panel
  • easiest thing to do here is choose large or small icons from the combo box in the upper right corner. That gives you a better view of what we are looking for. When done you should see something like this:

We are looking for the Credential Manager. So find that option and click it. You should see the following dialog appear:

Now here’s where you really should focus. OneNote credentials are stored in the Windows Credentials section. So click on that option (the one on the right). When clicked you will probably see a list of credentials you are using throughout the various applications. For clarity I removed all entries in the image but the one we need. Personal info has been blurred for obvious reasons. Now look for the Microsoft Office entry that says _Data:

Remove the entry
How to remove the entry? If you have the credential manager open you see that entries have a little arrow beside the title. You can expand that by clicking once on it. You will see something like this:

Now choose the obvious here: Remove.

When done close the control panel and start OneNote again. You will be prompted to supply your credentials again and chances are that you won’t have any synchronization troubles anymore!

Onenote Not Connecting To Internet Server

Solutions? Remember that you are in the era that needs credentials all the time. Everything needs to be synchronised and you will encounter some sync troubles from time to time. The problems are not always the same. You could have some wi-fi problems, there might be some maintenance going on somewhere, you might have multiple credentials for Office. It’s not always the same source that causes the trouble. I guess it’s the dark side of cloud based computing. They have cookies!

Today I finally solved a technical problem I have had for years and never been able to find a solution for. I first noticed this issue when I began using OpenVPN. I soon discovered that while an OpenVPN connection was active, OneNote would not sync my notebooks.

I then noticed that in all of the other Office 365 applications, such as Word and Excel, when I looked at file -> account it showed that I was not connected to the internet.

Onenote Not Connecting To Internet

Something else I found was that with the OpenVPN connection active I could not access the Microsoft Store and the MSN News app failed to load my personalized preferences and instead defaulted to the app defaults.

So How Did I Fix Windows 10 & Office 365 Not Connecting Over OpenVPN?

I did a lot of searching over the last few years to try and find a fix for this. I found many more people with the problem, and nobody seemed to have the right answer. A few things were suggested, such as disabling IPv6 on the TAP adapter, and a few other little tricks. Absolutely none of them worked.

Today, I was idly digging around for something else, and I came across a web page (I can’t remember which) that explained how Office 365 under Windows 10 uses the Network Location Awareness (NLA) and the Network Connection Status Indicator (NCSI) to discern whether an active network connection is available. Both of these rely on there being a default gateway specified for the current active Internet connection for them to sucesfully report the connection is up.

I fired up a command line, ran an ipconfig and there it was, the TAP adapter had a blank default gateway. At this stage, I figured I knew why Office 365 was unable to connect over my OpenVPN connection. Now all I had to do was come up with a fix.

Onenote Not Connecting To Internet

The Fix for Windows 10 & Office 365 Cannot Connect over OpenVPN

Onenote not connecting to internet

I first took a look at my VPN server settings (I run my own personal VPN on a server in the UK). I couldn’t find anywhere to add a default gateway to the OpenVPN client on initiating a connection. I could find nothing in the OpenVPN client either. And then I had the idea of trying to add a default gateway to the TAP adapter under Windows 10.

This worked perfectly, and the problem is now completely fixed. All Office 365 applications now see an Internet connection when I am connected to OpenVPN. MSN News and the Microsoft Store also work fine over OpenVPN now I have applied this fix.

A Walkthrough of How to Fix Windows 10 & Office 365 Not Connecting Over OpenVPN

Not

Setting a default gateway for the OpenVPN connection, so that Windows 10 and Office 365 can connect is really pretty easy, just follow the steps below:

Step 1 – Open up your list of network adapters and choose the OpenVPN TAP adapter:

Step 2 – Select the TCP/IPv4 protocol and then click on the button titled “properties”:

Onenote Not Connecting To Internet

Step 3 – From the main properties window for the TCP/IPv4 protocol click on the button titled “advanced”:

Onenote Can't Connect To Internet

Step 4 – Now add a new default gateway. In this screenshot I have already added a default gateway of 192.168.0.1:

Windows 10 & Office 365 Cannot Connect over OpenVPN Fixed

Now reconnect to your OpenVPN server using your OpenVPN client, and when you open up any of the Office 365 applications and select file -> account you will see that Office 365 now sees an active Internet connection.

Furthermore, you will now find that OneNote will sync notebooks, Microsoft Store will work, and the MSN News app will load your personalized preferences.

It has taken me years to get around to finding a solution for this problem, and in my search for a solution I have found many other people scratching their heads with the same issue, so I hope this short guide will be useful to them.

Some Final Thoughts on this OpenVPN Fix

Although this fix works, I feel it is a rather inelegant solution, as it requires manually adding the default gateway to the TAP adapter. On further thought, I think it should be possible to have the OpenVPN server set a default gateway for the connection on client connect. This can probably be achieved by changing the OpenVPN config file for the connection in some way.

When I have some free time I will experiment with this and see if I can’t come up with an automatic way for this fix to be applied so that there is no need to manually add the default gateway to the TAP adapter on every PC you need to fix.

Onenote Not Connecting To Internet Speed

  • Windows 10 & Office 365 Cannot Connect Over OpenVPN – Fixed! - July 25, 2018
  • How Not to Do Facebook Marketing - May 29, 2018
  • The Greatest Mistake You Can Make with B2B Social Updates - February 13, 2016




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