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Disable OneDrive in Windows 8.1 or not?

19 September 2014

In Windows 8.1 for Microsoft Office users we have an entire chapter on the OneDrive features – the good and the bad.

We include the policy and registry settings necessary to disable OneDrive entirely in Windows 8.1. But is it a good idea to entirely remove OneDrive features?

Microsoft does ram OneDrive in the face of Windows users, whether they like it or not. Making OneDrive the default save location for files is particularly aggressive and ignores the growing privacy concerns of customers.

On the other hand, OneDrive has a place and can be useful on a selective basis. It’s particularly good for accessing and sharing Microsoft Office documents. A document on OneDrive can be opened from almost any browser and shared with other people.

Many people use OneDrive in a limited way. They put only a few documents in the cloud like ones to share or important documents that might be needed in an emergency.

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If you have an Office 365 rental/subscription, it comes with a Terabyte of OneDrive storage. That much space can be useful even if it’s not your primary storage location. Encrypted backups could be stored there.

Instead of fully disabling OneDrive ‘The nuclear option’ consider just turning off some parts of the Windows 8.1 link with OneDrive.

Most commonly that means turning off the switch at PC Settings | OneDrive | Save documents to OneDrive by default.

To change the default save location in Office 2013 go to Options | Save and make sure that ‘Save to Computer by default’ is turned on.