Delete OneNote Section with invalid Character in Title

The Problem

When creating users in Office 365, a non-breaking space got into one of the filenames from our registration form, the character ( � ) - (U+FFFD : REPLACEMENT CHARACTER) appeared in the users name across Office 365, Microsoft Teams, and Class Notebook (The platforms we were using).

As the OneNote section had an invalid character in the folder name, OneNote was unable to delete the folder by using the OneNote Desktop app, or using the OneNote website, each time the section was deleted it would disappear, sync with OneNote, and then reappear as it was unable to delete the folder.

The Solution

After trying multiple solutions and scouring the internet, many solutions of which failed to work, I was able to rename and delete the section in OneNote using the following steps.

Deleting a Class Notebook Section with an Invalid Character

1. Open the 32bit version of Internet Explorer, located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer The 32bit version of Internet Explorer is required as it supports the ActiveX controls to be able to open the SharePoint site in Windows File Explorer.
2. Login to portal.office.com with your Office 365 credentials, navigate to your Microsoft Team with the Class Notebook Section issues. Open the Files tab and Click on "Open in SharePoint"
   
   
3. This will open the SharePoint site for your Team, on the left-hand side pane click on "Site contents" then "Site Assets"
     
   
   
   
4. In the top right, Click on the "All Documents" dropdown, you should see the option "View in File Explorer" click "View in File Explorer"
   
   
   
5. You will see a number of popups, click "Allow once" or "Allow"
   
6. The SharePoint site should then open up in Windows File Explorer so that you can see all of the files and folders on the site. Note that OneNote files show up as folders when viewing in Windows File Explorer so you can explore the inner workings of the OneNote file.
7. Open the folder for your OneNote Notebook, the hold SHIFT + Right Click, then Select "Open Powershell window here"
   
   
   
8. In the PowerShell window type the command "ren 'folder name'" without the special characters
   
9. Then type a new name for the folder
   
10. The folder should now have your new name, to then delete the OneNote section you can open the OneNote desktop application, Sync the changes, and delete as per normal.