Microsoft OneNote Page Link Broken – Couldn’t Open That Location Solution

Recently I had a few colleagues complaining that the Microsoft OneNote hyperlinks I was sending them via Outlook emails and Lync instant messages weren’t working. One of two things was happening:

1. The Notebook was opening to the correct section, but not to the correct page, and they’d need to look back at the link I sent to figure out what page I was trying to direct them to.

-or-

2. They were receiving the following error message: “We couldn’t open that location. It might not exist or you might not have permission to open it. Please contact the owner of onenote:#X for more information.” (see below)

This just wouldn’t do so I poked around for a while and discovered something surprising. Sometimes I forgot to give my page a Page Title like so:

As you can see when you don’t give a page a proper title, the first sentence you type on the page shows up in the Pages Pane on the right.

 

When you right click on the page to “Copy Link to Page” a hyperlink is generated, and when you hover your cursor over the link, it appears normal…

… until you click on the link and this pops up:

Which let’s be honest is a tad vague for the average end user…

Now, when you give the page an actual title like so:

And recreate the link using the “Copy Link to Page” button…

…everything work as expected.

Lesson: Always name your pages with titles.

Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking, DUH, who wouldn’t name their page with a title – the title header is right there staring you in the face…

Well, naysayers, it’s actually quite an easy mistake if you are a fan of Quick Notes.

Why?

Because Quick Notes don’t have Page Titles. They have the “Hide Page Title” button selected, and you must unselect it to have it appear again. Easy step to forget for new users, and even some of us who use OneNote every day when we’re in a rush.

I believe this is how I was ending up with first scenario I mentioned. (The Notebook was opening to the correct section, but not to the correct page.) It worked for me in my desktop version of OneNote, but when I’d send the link to others that didn’t have that Notebook open, things would not work as expected… I’ll perform some more testing later this month and report back on my findings.

Until then, happy OneNoting!