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.
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.
It seems like every new day has a new reason to remind me why I’m glad I ditched Microsoft.
Oh no! Guess I better continue to use Libre Office instead.
And Collabora Office on mobile devices :)
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.
Microsoft is steering customers to Linux
Thanks, I hate it.
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.
Time to start saving ai poisoning documents
Jokes on them, I use AI for all my text writing anyway.
I feel like it’s more direct than that. They want more OneDrive subscriptions. Cloud storage is absurdly profitable
I was trying to create an Excel pie chart based on a downloaded CSV file. No big, but something I might only need once a year. Couldn’t remember the PivotTable params. Search in help. It offers to do it for me. Sure, I think, not realizing it would try to turn on CoPilot, then try to upload the file to their cloud for analysis, then save it to OneDrive cloud.
The only thing that stopped it was that by default the ‘auto-save’ toggle wasn’t on. So it stopped and complained. Killed it and started over, making sure everything was local. Ugh.
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.
That’s clearly for Copilot to scan all your documents for “indexing” without your consent
Its implied consent just like when a woman looks at you, duh.
Is it even possible for regular person to get a an enterprise license of windows?
Seems like of this is intentional to funnel people into OS that spies and steals.
I’ve heard that there is a mass grave one can visit where you can find information about obtaining and activating enterprise versions.
there is an ancient spell that will help you:
india romeo mike space hotel tango tango papa sierra colon slash slash golf echo tango dot alpha charlie tango india victor alpha tango echo delta dot whisky india november space pipe space india echo xray
check out massgrave.dev
Ohh wow… Looks very interesting. Thank you
Try Linux and LibreOffice.
Daily driver for the last 10+ years!
On it
and Collabora Office on mobile devices!
Meh. That’s why LibreOffice exists.
Isn’t onedrive a paid feature? What if you don’t pay for it?
If it’s like Google, they give you a seemingly generous amount of storage for free. Then they causally switch where you are saving everything to their cloud (one drive, Google drive) and then, if they have done their math right, a few years later you start getting polite prompts to upgrade your storage so you don’t lose all your stuff. Usually by then you are invested enough that spending the time pulling everything back from there and storing it locally seems hardly worth the effort when it only costs $3 a month or whatever to quadruple your storage and kick the can down the road.
Rince and repeat
Apple does the same with icloud storage-many apps use the space to back up their data.
Google does the same with gmail and Google drive- your emails fill the space in your cloud.
If anything, MS are behind on this particular enshittification
Nice try M$, 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.
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
