OneNote can’t sync because it’s run out of space

If you’ve had Office 365 for a while, and use OneNote, you may have come across one of the following errors regarding space issues on Office 365.

Here’s the errors in OneNote 2016

We’re sorry, we can’t sync because you’ve run out of space in your OneDrive or Office 365 account. Click here for more details.

We’re sorry, we can’t sync this section because you’ve run out of space in your OneDrive or Office 365 Account (Error 0xE00C0796)

Here’s the error in OneNote Online:

No free space. This site is out of storage space and charges can’t be saved. To free up space, delete files you don’t need and empty the recycle bin.

Why is OneNote not syncing?

The OneNote Online message gives a clue to what’s going on here: The SharePoint Online site collection has run out of space.

But doesn’t everyone get 1024GB of storage on SharePoint Online?

Yes, Microsoft now provide 1024GB of SharePoint Online storage space for Office 365 customers. However, this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when Office 365 came with 10GB of storage space for all site collections, and the default site collection only received 1GB of this. When Microsoft upped the quota to 1024GB of storage space, the tenants that existed at the time didn’t have their storage limits automatically upped to take advantage of the new space.

How to fix this and get OneNote syncing again

You’ll need to log into the SharePoint Admin center and increase the storage quota for the site collection containing the OneNote notebook. Usually this is the default site collection with the url of <tenantname>.sharepoint.com.

1. To get started, log into Office 365 as an Administrator here
2. Click SharePoint on the left menu under Admin centers
3. The SharePoint Admin Center will display your list of site collections. You should be able to identify the site collection that has used all of it’s storage.
4. Select the site collection that has run out of space, and click Storage Quota
5. Select and remove the value in the field ‘Limit storage quota for each selected site collection to a maximum of:’
6. Increase the storage quota to whatever you like, for example, 1024 GB. Then click Save
7. Wait for the changes to apply and try syncing the OneNote Notebook again. It should go through without an issue!