Lost Skydrive Account, Lost OneNote Files

September 30, 2013 9:59 AM

Updating to Office 2013 led to find that my recent notes had been stored on Microsoft Skydrive instead of locally... and that I can no longer access them. Oops.

Now I have no idea how to find out the username and password account it was that these was stored on. After setting up that account several years ago I never actually used it for anything. Somehow the OneNote notes I took over the last month were stored on that instead of my hard drive however. I have a link to the profile of the user that these notes are held by, but no way to access it. Is there some way to find out the e-mail address associated with a Skydrive profile? Any other way to bust open this account to liberate my notes?

posted by Winnemac to Technology (8 answers total)

The userid / password must be stored on your computer somewhere, otherwise it could not have logged in and stored the files. Check your browser password file, and check in the Windows registry.

Note: I'm a Linux guy and not a Windows expert - but my point holds. If the computer logged in without your knowledge, it has the userid and password. You just need to find it and hope its not encrypted. Google may be your friend on how to figure out where it is stored on your hard drive.
posted by COD at 10:09 AM on September 30, 2013

Response by poster: The userid / password must be stored on your computer somewhere


That was true. My fear is that installing Office 2013 overwrote that information. I will try the google though.
posted by Winnemac at 10:20 AM on September 30, 2013

Desktop OneNote caches cloud-based notebooks locally. Have a look somewhere like: C:\Users\(yourname)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote\15.0\Backup
posted by ed\26h at 10:33 AM on September 30, 2013

Response by poster: Good thinking. Some, but not all, of my notes are backed up there.
Not the recent ones I am looking for unfortunately.
posted by Winnemac at 11:10 AM on September 30, 2013

I don't know for sure this is the case, but open windows explorer and navigate to your Skydrive Folder. Go into Windows Explorer's folder options and set it so that hidden files are visible. Skydrive should (if they've learned anything from Dropbox) keep a cache of recent files from the Skydrive, and a hidden folder would be the first place to look. Also check whatever web presence Skydrive has to see if there are options for recovering files that were in there before but were lost. I'm not a user of Skydrive, but Dropbox has this feature, and I am assuming that Skydrive is feature-competitive.

Some cursory research indicates that Skydrive has a recycle bin of its own, apparently visible on the web interface for Skydrive. Check that and check your own bin on your workstation/PC.

The username/password is your "Microsoft Account." Check your email for any mail from MS regarding "microsoft account" or skydrive. The email address they sent that to is your microsoft account most likely. You can start the password recovery process here. (This is the sort of problem I used to have all the time before I got a password manager/generator. I use and recommend Keepass. Now I've got great passwords even at rinky-dink message boards.)

Check to see if you have enabled File History in Windows 8. Check the above Appdata folder through that.
posted by Sunburnt at 12:46 PM on September 30, 2013

In Office 2013, the email address you logged in with is stored in the registry under one of the folders at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Identity\Identities. I never used Office 2010 on my current machine but if you're lucky, the keys will not have been wiped during the upgrade and you can find the 2010 settings by replacing '15.0' with '14.0'.

If you're not familiar with the registry, you can follow these directions to open the registry editor, but you must be very careful not to make any changes!
posted by jacalata at 2:34 PM on September 30, 2013

Response by poster: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Identity\Identities.

I found this, but no equivalent in 14.0

However I did track down a copy of Onenote 2010, reinstalled it, and found everything as it was. Problem solved. Now everything is getting saved locally or in accounts that I actually use on a regular basis.
posted by Winnemac at 7:26 PM on September 30, 2013

You'd be well advised to find the username and password for that skydrive account so you can use it, or delete the account entirely. I can only imagine there will be more issues like this in the future.

(Also, stored locally is not "safe". This is why dropbox/skydrive folders are great- they are both local copies AND cloud backed copies.)
posted by gjc at 4:31 AM on October 2, 2013