Repeated sign-in prompts in OneNote for Mac, iPhone, and iPad

Last updated: November 7, 2017

ISSUE

If you use OneNote 2016 for Mac and OneNote for iPhone and iPad, you may be asked to sign in any time you open the OneNote app or when you switch between notebooks. Similarly, OneNote may require you to sign in repeatedly to resolve sync errors.

STATUS: INVESTIGATING

Please update to the latest version of OneNote for Mac, iPhone and iPad. If you've downloaded OneNote from the Mac App Store, launch the App Store and check for Updates. You should see the option to update OneNote there. If you installed OneNote as part of Microsoft Office for Mac, then open OneNote, go to the Help > Check for Updates menu to launch the Microsoft AutoUpdate app and follow instructions there. Update all of the Microsoft Office applications, since they all use the same keychain items. To learn more, see Check for updates in OneNote 2016 for Mac.

To download the latest version of OneNote for iPhone and iPad, check the App Store for automatic updates. If you also have other Microsoft Office apps for iOS (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook), you will need to update all of them.

If you are still experiencing the issue after installing the recent updates, the next step would be to clear your Office credentials, and recreate them by following these steps:

To clear your Office credentials for macOS

Sometimes your credentials can get corrupted, causing OneNote to continually prompt you to enter your password. To clean this up, do the following:

1. Quit from all Mac Office Applications, except for OneNote

2. In OneNote, sign out. This only logs you out, and all the notebooks will still be there.

3. Quit OneNote.

4. Launch "Keychain Access" and search for all items that contain "Office15". There should be only a couple items, one for each account you have logged into.

   1. The name will be a long alpha-numeric code and the kind will start with “MicrosoftOffice15…”

5. Delete these items. It is only deleting the authentication credentials, no data. Once you sign in again, they will be re-created.

6. Launch OneNote and sign into your accounts.

Since all the office apps share the credentials (Word/Excel/PowerPoint) you will have to sign in again with those apps as well.

To clear your Office credentials for iOS

Sometimes your credentials can get corrupted, causing OneNote to continually prompt you to enter your password. To clean this up, do the following:

1. If you have other Office apps installed (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc), make sure you have updated this to be the latest version. Since we share the same Office identity, if there is a bug in any of those apps, it can corrupt the identity.

2. Clearing your credentials often helps. To do that, follow these steps.

   1. Go to iOS Settings > OneNote > Reset OneNote > Delete Sign-In Credentials and turn the toggle on.

   2. Make sure OneNote is not running. (Double tap the home screen to see all running apps and swipe up on OneNote to close it.)

   3. Re-open OneNote and sign in again.

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See Also

Fixes or workarounds for recent issues in OneNote for Mac