OneNote on my Android phone is completely read only and none of the official MS help pages have given me a solution that works.

Hi, Lee Fergusson

This sounds less like a normal “read-only notebook” setting and more like the Android app has lost its proper sync connection, especially since edits from the laptop are not reaching the phone. First make sure the notebook is healthy online, then treat the phone app as the problem device rather than changing the notebook itself.

Here are some suggestions you can try:

On the laptop, open the notebook in OneNote for the web at https://www.onenote.com. If it opens there and your latest laptop edits are visible, the notebook itself is probably OK, and the Android app is the part that needs fixing.

On the Android phone, check whether OneNote shows an actual sync error. In OneNote for Android, go to More Notebooks and choose View Sync Errors if available. Any error code there is useful because it points to the real cause.

If you see a yellow Saved offline or read-only message, tap the message or Refresh Now. This is listed as the fix when OneNote says the notebook is read-only because it is not syncing.

If you have more than one Microsoft account on the phone, it is recommended that you check you opened the notebook from the same account that works on the laptop. OneNote notebooks can look confusing on Android when personal, school, or work accounts are mixed.

If the account was originally set up with a phone number, add an email address to that Microsoft account, as this can block OneNote for Android syncing.

Thank you for your patience in reading, I hope this information has been helpful to you. 

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