In a move that could redefine how millions work, Microsoft is steering Word users toward the cloud, sparking debates over convenience, control, and the future of local storage.
Microsoft Word logo in Windows 11 Search. Word and OneDrive just got a lot closer. (Image credit: Windows Central) Microsoft held a special OneDrive and Copilot event today where it announced a number of new features for the cloud-storage service. Buried in the announcements is one change that Microsoft is soon making to Word that might ruffle some feathers among those who are still pushing back against OneDrive and the cloud.
“Starting today, new documents in Word desktop on Windows (Insiders) now save directly to OneDrive, with autosave enabled,” says Microsoft. This means that creating new documents in Word in the future will automatically save said documents to your OneDrive storage, with autosave enabled from the get-go.
The change is designed to make it easier for users to back up and access their documents across devices, but some might find Word attempting to automatically upload documents to the cloud by default to be a privacy concern. Many will likely not even notice that Word’s behavior has changed, as the entire saving and backup process is automatic.
Before I got really into FOSS, there was a glitch at my college which revoked my Office365 licence. I switched to LibreOffice and never looked back, even when the glitch was patched.
Yet another reason to use alternatives to Microsoft.
Tell that to people who have to use certain software that only works with Office for work.
Even more fun in my case: for security reasons I am not allowed to save my work in any cloud.
I’ve spent the last year or so migrating small businesses to Linux.
Thus far none of them want to go back and this announcement is just another reason for people to move away from them.
The change is designed to make it easier for users to back up and access their documents across devices
Bullshit. The change is so microsoft can mine more data to feed openai.
Jokes on them, I use AI for all my text writing anyway.
Time to start saving ai poisoning documents
I feel like it’s more direct than that. They want more OneDrive subscriptions. Cloud storage is absurdly profitable
Oh no! Guess I better continue to use Libre Office instead.
And Collabora Office on mobile devices :)
It seems like every new day has a new reason to remind me why I’m glad I ditched Microsoft.
They did this already with Excel, and broke a lot of macros. Also changed how it could use IE for automation, and of course there’s no way to convert it to Edge. If Microsoft didn’t have 99% of the business world already tied up in their stuff they’d go out of business soon for the stupid things they break of their own products.
Before retiring, I was an independent contractor, and had to sign a lot of NDAs. Cloud storage, outside of the contracting companies’ servers, was usually a big no-no.
and that changes everything
Does not change my opinion :-)
This company is becoming more and more toxic, and everybody should abandon their stuff ASAP!
Nice try M$, I completely removed OneDrive from all of my Win11 installs. It still tries to get me to save to the folder that once upon a time was OneDrive by default. Auto save off, and save as on every save and select the folder on my file server.
completely removed OneDrive
Kindly asking for a tutorial.
The easiest way is firing up Chris Titus’ script on the Terminal, going to Tweaks and selecting the OneDrive removal script. I don’t endorse Chris Titus’ content… but the script does work well as an aggregator for a bunch of other scripts that you’d have a hard time finding or running yourself.
Thanks, I hate it.
But they’ve been doing that for ages. I had to change it more than a year ago.
Yeah, WTF, this guy just used his computer for the first time in 2 years?
Meh. That’s why LibreOffice exists.
OneNote stopped working for me because of some OneDrive connectivity issue. It wouldn’t give me the option to just save locally
Rather than fight with it, I just stopped using it. There are other note taking programs
It’s no a privacy issue to me, it’s usability. My harddrive is always there and connected. The internet and OneDrive are not. More than anything else, availability is the #1 thing I need with basic office applications
Microsoft is steering customers to Linux
