Facing OneNote sync issue on macOS? Here's what's going on

Looks like some OneNote users are facing a major issue. Specifically, those using this Microsoft product on a specific set of Apple hardware (iMac or Macbook) say their OneNote has stopped syncing out of the blue. They are now greeted with the message “Sync error: please refresh this notebook to continue syncing. refresh now,” and the error code they get is 0xE000006C cig68 30115.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that most of the complainants are using older Apple hardware powered by macOS Catalina (10.15) or Mojave (10.14). Take a look at some of the complaints:

While combing through these user discussions, I found some users pointing out that the MacOS app for OneNote was recently updated, and is now only compatible with macOS 13 and above. And when I checked this for myself, it indeed turned out to be the case. The app was updated a couple of weeks ago, and although the release notes are generic, the app info section clearly spells out what it is compatible with.

This means, now there is no guarantee that OneNote for macOS will work fine (or, at all) with macOS versions older than Ventura. And I think this is precisely why OneNote users on older macOS versions are facing this issue. However, curiously, I found at least one user who confirmed they are on macOS Sequoia 15.5 but are still facing this issue. I have no explanation as to why they are facing the problem. However, since I couldn’t find any more such complaints, I didn’t investigate on this front.

Moving on, this brings me to an important question – is there any workaround available for those stuck in this situation? Well, there seems to be. Digging in deeper into the user discussions, I found some users confirming that an older version of OneNote 16.33 worked for them.

Here’s the link shared in the screenshots above: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac

You can also give this a try, and see if it solves your problem. FYI: this workaround involving older OneNote version was also advocated by this random article I found while Googling about the problem.

However, if this workaround doesn’t fix your problem, then you can access OneNote through the web app or through your phone, as many users have confirmed that it’s only the mac app that has lost its compatibility with older macOS versions.

For your reference, following are the sources I used to compile all the info I shared in this article: Reddit (1,2) & Microsoft Forums (1,2)

That’s pretty much it on this topic for now. Feel free to use the comments section below to share your thoughts (if any). Thanks in advance.