How to Renew Your California Notary Commission

California does not renew notary commissions. It reappoints notaries, and the difference between those two words is worth about three hours of your life.

There is a three-hour refresher course for a notary who holds a current commission and has already completed an approved six-hour course once. It works only if you apply for reappointment before the commission you hold expires. Let it expire first and the handbook is flat about the consequence: you complete an approved six-hour course again, "even if the individual already once satisfactorily completed an approved six-hour course for a previous commission."

You sit the written examination either way. You submit fingerprints either way. You file an oath of office and a bond either way. The coursework is the part that doubles, and it doubles on a date.

This guide covers reappointment only. If you have never held a California commission, the process is longer and different in several places, and it is written up separately in How to Become a Notary in California. And if the only open question is which of the two courses applies to you, Six-Hour vs. Three-Hour California Notary Course settles that in one page.

Everything below is drawn from the California Notary Public Handbook, January 2026 edition, published by the Secretary of State, and from the code sections that handbook reproduces or cites.

Renewal is reappointment, and the difference is not cosmetic

The handbook's word for this is reappointment, and it is an accurate one. What it describes is a new application, a new written examination, new fingerprints, a new commission, and a new oath and bond filed with the county clerk — the same sequence a first-time applicant runs, with one step shortened.

Two things follow from that, and both of them cost money if you get them wrong:

• The shortened step is conditional. The six-hour course is the baseline. The handbook states it plainly: "All persons are required to take and satisfactorily complete a six-hour course of study approved by the Secretary of State prior to appointment as a notary public," and "all persons being appointed, no matter how many commission terms held in the past, are required to take the initial six-hour course of study" (Government Code section 8201(a)(3) and (b)). The three-hour refresher sits on top of that baseline as a conditional alternative — not a separate track you graduate onto permanently.
• Your current commission does not pause while you do this. It expires on the date printed on your seal, whatever stage your application has reached.

Who qualifies for the three-hour refresher

Government Code section 8201(b)(2) and the handbook between them attach conditions to the refresher. You must satisfy every one of them:

1. You hold a current California notary public commission. The handbook's sentence begins there — "A notary public who holds a current California notary public commission…" — and section 8201(b)(2) applies to "an applicant for notary public who holds a California notary public commission." The handbook's eligibility answer puts it as a "current active commission."
2. You have already completed an approved six-hour course at least once. The handbook: "…and who has completed an approved six-hour course at least one time." The statute: "who has satisfactorily completed the six-hour course of study required pursuant to paragraph (1) at least one time."
3. You are applying before that commission expires. "The three-hour refresher course can only be used to satisfy the education requirement if the notary public is applying for a new commission before their current commission has expired."

When the handbook answers the eligibility question head-on, it adds a fourth condition that is really a sharper statement of the third. Notaries who meet 1 and 2 are eligible for a three-hour refresher "if they have taken the notary public exam and submitted the application at the exam site prior to the expiration date of the current commission."

Miss any one of these and the three-hour course does not satisfy your education requirement. The three hours you completed are not credited against the six either: the handbook says you take the six-hour course "even if the applicant previously has completed an approved three-hour course."

The relationship between the two courses runs in one direction only:

A six-hour approved education course always satisfies the education requirement, regardless of whether you are a new applicant or applying for reappointment.

A six-hour course satisfies the three-hour requirement. A three-hour course never satisfies a six-hour requirement. If you cannot be confident your application will reach the exam site before your expiration date, six hours is the course that works in either case.

Both courses have to come from a vendor the Secretary of State has approved. Section 8201.2 requires the Secretary of State to review courses of study proposed by vendors, approve those that include all the material a person is expected to know to pass the written examination, and compile the list of vendors offering an approved course. That list is published at notaryeducation.sos.ca.gov.

This guide is free information. It is not the course. Reading it does not count toward those hours — three for a refresher, six for a first commission — and cannot. The statutory education requirement is satisfied only by completing a course of study the Secretary of State has approved and receiving that vendor's Proof of Completion certificate. This page is general information about California notary law, not legal advice.

Three ways a reappointment falls back to six hours

Three situations in the handbook end with a notary who set out to take the three-hour refresher owing six hours instead. None of the three is a judgment call. Each is a date.

1. Your commission expires before you apply. The reappointment answer states it twice over: "To meet the requirement to take the three-hour refresher course, a notary must apply for reappointment before their current commission expires," and "an applicant whose commission expires before reappointment is made for a new commission must take an approved six-hour course, even if the applicant previously has completed an approved three-hour course."

2. You fail the examination and your commission expires before you retake it. The handbook answers this one directly. If you can sit the exam again before your current commission's expiration date, the Proof of Completion certificate from the three-hour course "would still be valid." But "if your commission expires prior to retaking the exam, the three-hour course no longer meets the education requirements, and you will need to take an approved six-hour course."

3. You miss the 30-day oath and bond deadline on the new commission. This one applies to a notary who did everything else right. The handbook's answer to "I did not file my oath and bond on time" has a branch for exactly this person: "If you are a notary public seeking reappointment and took an approved three-hour notary public refresher education course, you will still need to take an approved six-hour course. The three-hour course no longer meets the education requirements because your current commission has expired." You then attach the six-hour Proof of Completion to a new application with a 2-inch by 2-inch color passport photograph and a check for twenty dollars, and — the handbook is specific about this too — "you also will need to have your fingerprints retaken at a Live Scan site."

The deadline behind that third case is the one every California notary faces at the start of a term: "Once the commission has been issued, a person has 30 calendar days from the beginning of the term prescribed in the commission to take, subscribe, and file an oath of office and file a $15,000 surety bond with the county clerk's office." The commission does not take effect until the oath and bond are filed, and the handbook states that exceptions are not made to the 30-day filing requirement for mail service delays, county clerk mail processing delays, or any other reason. The mechanics of that filing — where the oath may lawfully be taken and subscribed, when it may be mailed, which county — are set out in step 6 of the first-appointment guide, and they do not change for a reappointment.

How the handbook words the deadline

It is worth being precise here, because the handbook states the timing condition in at least three places and the three are not word-for-word identical:

• General Information. The refresher works "if the notary public is applying for a new commission before their current commission has expired."
• The reappointment question and answer. "To meet the requirement to take the three-hour refresher course, a notary must apply for reappointment before their current commission expires," and an applicant "whose commission expires before reappointment is made for a new commission" owes six hours.
• The eligibility question and answer. You qualify "if [you] have taken the notary public exam and submitted the application at the exam site prior to the expiration date of the current commission."

Whether the operative act is applying, submitting the application at the exam site, or the Secretary of State making the reappointment is not something the handbook settles in a single sentence, and the gap between the earliest and the latest of those readings is not one the handbook measures. The conservative reading is the only one that cannot cost you anything: finish the refresher, sit the examination, and get the application in at the exam site well ahead of the expiration date. The handbook's own scheduling advice points the same way — take the exam at least six months before your commission expires, "to avoid a break in commission terms."

The reappointment timeline

Read that timeline backwards and the six-month recommendation stops looking cautious. A reappointment commission is issued 30 days before your current one expires "if you have complied with all the requirements to become a notary public" — so the course, the examination, the results and the background check all have to be finished before that point.

What you do again, every term

Reappointment repeats the qualifying process. The refresher shortens one step of it; it removes none of the others.

• Fingerprints, every time. The handbook answers the question in the form notaries actually ask it — reappointment without a break in the commission — and the answer is: "Yes. All notary public applicants, whether or not they have held a previous commission, must submit fingerprints to the California Department of Justice for the purpose of a background check." The Department of Justice then forwards the images to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and requests a federal summary of criminal information.
• Disclosure, every time. There is no time limit on disclosing convictions, and a conviction dismissed under Penal Code section 1203.4 or 1203.4a is still disclosable. The sentence that matters on a reappointment is this one: "Failure to disclose all conviction information on each application for an appointment or reappointment is grounds for denial." Having disclosed on a previous application does not carry the disclosure forward. The disclosure step in the first-appointment guide covers the denial grounds and the limits on the right to a hearing.
• The written examination. Section 8201(a)(4) applies to every person appointed as a notary public, and "all questions shall be based on the law of this state as set forth in the booklet of the laws of California relating to notaries public distributed by the Secretary of State."
• The oath of office and a $15,000 bond, filed with the county clerk in the county where you maintain a principal place of business as shown in the application on file with the Secretary of State.
• A seal that matches your commission. The handbook does not set out a seal step for reappointment in one place, so here are the rules it does state. A seal must contain "the expiration date of the notary public's commission" and "the sequential identification number (commission number) assigned to the notary public, as well as the identification number assigned to the seal manufacturer or vendor" — two of the elements the handbook lists for a seal, not the whole list; the sibling guide sets them out in full. The Secretary of State "shall issue certificates of authorization with which a notary public can obtain an official notary seal," and a vendor or manufacturer may provide a seal "only upon presentation by the notary public of a certificate of authorization." And when a commission is no longer valid, its seal must be destroyed — see below.

If you moved counties since your last term

Your commission lets you notarize throughout California regardless of where the oath and bond were filed, and the handbook says plainly that a county transfer is not required. You must still notify the Secretary of State of an address change, by certified mail or any other means of physical delivery that provides a receipt, within 30 days of the change (Government Code section 8213.5). What that notice should contain is set out in Keeping Your Notary Commission in Good Standing.

If you do elect to re-file in the new county, section 8213(b) and the handbook set out what follows: file a new oath of office and either a new bond or a duplicate of the original bond with the county clerk in the new county, checking the county transfer box on the oath form; obtain within 30 days of that filing an official seal bearing the new county's name; and expect the same filing and recording fees "as in the case of the original filing and recording of the bond." The Secretary of State sends the certificate of authorization to manufacture the new seal once it has received and processed the oath filed in the new county, and your stamp "must reflect the county where your most recent oath and bond are filed."

Your journal and seal when a commission ends

This section carries a real discrepancy inside the handbook, and it happens to be a discrepancy about the renewing notary specifically. The journal and the seal are each stated more than one way, and the two do not resolve in the same direction.

The summary paragraph attaches the duty to the commission simply ceasing to be valid. In General Information: "Within 30 days from the date the notary public commission is no longer valid, the notary public must deliver all notarial journals, records and papers to the county clerk's office where the oath was filed." Willful failure or refusal is a misdemeanor, and the notary "shall be personally liable for damages to any person injured by that action or inaction."

Government Code section 8209, reproduced in the same handbook, adds a qualifier. The duty attaches "if any notary public resigns, is disqualified, removed from office, or allows his or her appointment to expire without obtaining reappointment within 30 days." The handbook's own question and answer on what to do with your journal and stamp carries that clause too: "allows their appointment to expire without obtaining reappointment within 30 days." The summary drops it. The qualifier the summary drops is exactly the situation a notary applying for reappointment is in, so take the statute's wording as the one that governs rather than reading the summary as a blanket instruction to surrender your journal the moment a term ends.

The seal is not stated one way either. General Information puts the duty unconditionally: "When the notary public commission is no longer valid, the notary public seal must be destroyed to protect the notary public from possible fraudulent use by another" (Government Code section 8207). The text of section 8207 itself conditions it on a named set of events: "The notary, or his or her representative, shall destroy or deface the seal upon termination, resignation, or revocation of the notary's commission." And the question and answer quoted just above for the journal does not stop at the journal. Its sentence runs "…all notarial journals must be delivered within 30 days to the clerk of the county in which the notary public's current official oath of office was filed and destroy your seal," so in that sentence the "without obtaining reappointment within 30 days" condition governs the seal as well as the journal.

That is the opposite shape to the journal. There, the reproduced statute is the narrower text and the General Information summary is the loose one. Here the narrower text is a question and answer citing section 8209, while section 8207 — the section General Information cites for the seal — conditions the duty on its own different list. This article does not pick between them.

One thing letting a commission lapse does not do is end a problem. Government Code section 8214.4 is headed "Resignation or expiration of commission not a bar to investigation or disciplinary proceedings," and provides that where the Secretary of State determines — "after proceedings conducted in accordance with" the Administrative Procedure Act, not on its own say-so — that a notary committed or omitted acts constituting grounds for suspension or revocation, "the resignation or expiration of the notary public's commission shall not bar the Secretary of State from instituting or continuing an investigation or instituting disciplinary proceedings." An order entered under section 8214.4 is also one of the two circumstances in which section 8214.3 gives a denied applicant no right to a hearing on a later application. Allowing a commission to run out mid-investigation costs you the commission and can cost you the appeal.

The journal's own rules — what every entry must contain, when a thumbprint is required and when the statute exempts a document, and who can compel access to the book while you still hold it — are set out in California Notary Journal Requirements.

What the handbook does not say

The January 2026 handbook is a legal reference, not an operations manual. These are questions a renewing notary will reasonably have that it does not answer, listed so you do not mistake this article's silence for an answer:

• What reappointment costs. Government Code section 8204.1 names "the examination, application, commission, and fingerprint fee" and states an amount for none of them. The only dollar figure the handbook attaches to a reappointment application is the check for twenty dollars ($20) described in its questions and answers. Live Scan, your bond premium, a seal, the county recording fee that section 8213(d) makes payable on every oath-and-bond filing, and the approved course itself have no amount anywhere in it. The cost section of the first-appointment guide lists every cost item the handbook names and what it does and does not price. Confirm current figures with the Secretary of State before you budget.
• A grace period after expiry. The handbook describes none. What it describes is the six-hour consequence quoted above.
• How early you may apply. It recommends sitting the exam at least six months out and says results are valid one year, but it states no maximum lead time for the application itself.
• What date a reappointment term begins. Section 8204 runs the four years "commencing with the date specified in the commission," and the handbook says a reappointment commission is issued 30 days before the current one expires. It does not say what date the new commission specifies — which matters, because the 30-day oath-and-bond clock runs from the beginning of the term, not from the date of issue.
• Whether your commission number changes. The seal must carry the sequential identification number assigned to you. Nothing in the handbook says whether reappointment assigns a new one.
• How long a Proof of Completion certificate stays current. The handbook requires a "current" Proof of Completion on a re-application, and says a three-hour certificate "would still be valid" if you retake the exam before your commission expires, but it puts no fixed shelf life on the certificate itself.
• Processing times. The handbook gives no figure for how long the Secretary of State takes to process an application, return examination results, or clear a background check. (It does state when the reappointment commission issues — 30 days before the current one expires — which is a deadline, not a duration.)

Official sources

Do not take an article's word for a date that decides whether you owe three hours or six.

• California Notary Public Handbook, plus a checklist of the required steps to become a notary public — www.sos.ca.gov/notary
• Approved education vendors — notaryeducation.sos.ca.gov
• Secretary of State, Notary Public Section — Business Programs Division, P.O. Box 942877, Sacramento, California 94277-0001; (916) 653-3595
• First-time applicants — How to Become a Notary in California