Forum Discussion
OneNote Section renaming issues - VERY annoying
While renaming a Section, OneNote seems to have some sort of short timeout timer where if you don't start typing quickly enough, or don't hit enter soon enough after finishing, it completely bails on the renaming operation and reverts back to the previous name.
The timer seems to be shorter when creating a new section. Hitting the "+" pops up a new section with the section label in edit mode. If you don't type something quickly enough (< 3 seconds) - it exits edit mode and leaves the label as "Section X".
For section renaming, if you double-click on the section tab label, the label switches to "edit" mode and the full label is highlighted. If you wait too long to start typing, it either exits edit mode by itself or waits until you type something (anything) and exits edit mode completely ignoring what you typed. If you do type something but don't finish immediately by hitting enter, the timer expires and any keyboard input after the timer expires causes edit mode to exit and the new label you typed to be ignored.
It seems this might be intentional (Ill-conceived) behavior - attempting to prevent inadvertent renaming of sections if someone accidentally presses keyboard keys or puts something on their keyboard that causes inadvertent keyboard presses.
If that's the case it's an exceeding clumsy attempt and needs to be rethought. The current behavior in this regard is very annoying.
If the desire is to ignore inadvertent section renaming, a study needs to be done to understand the characteristics of accidental keypresses. I'd be willing to bet that rapid same-character sequences that result from the same key being pressed and held are much more indicative of inadvertent input than the total time taken to start or finish a renaming operation after edit mode is entered.
You could also create an additional hurdle to enter edit mode e.g. eliminating the doubleclick option and only allow right-click followed by drop drown menu selection.
Has anyone else experienced this? Has Microsoft ever commented on this issue.
It's 2025 as Quantezl has noted and, after so many years, the issue persists in Windows - I can't speak for Mac or iOS, but ask me in a year or two (do you read me Microsoft?), but I digress. This appears to be a bug that ain't gonna get fixed. This and other little ticks in the behavior of OneNote (writing with a pen in Windows is beyond annoying, from the taskbar behaviors to the pen not inking what's been written, irrespective of whether auto shapes is on or off) and design decisions (proprietary format, limited linking support and references to other pages), drive me little by little to other tools, in my opinion better in many respects.
4 years later, still an issue and a supremely annoying one....
