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Pinned Save folders in Microsoft 365

Word, Excel and PowerPoint 365 for Windows are getting better control over what appears on the new-style Save dialog.  Folders can be ‘pinned’ to always be show up in the list and a quick way to share a document. But a major annoyance remains unchanged.

On the ‘Save this file’ dialog under Choose a location either click on the pin icon at right of a folder or choose the menu dots then Pin to list.

This folder list and ‘pin’ isn’t connected with the File | Open | Folders list.

These ‘pinned’ items don’t act like other Office folder/document lists in the Backstage pane.

Normally a pinned item moves to the top of the list but the current version of this feature leaves a pinned folder in it’s original place.  We’ll see if that’s a bug to be fixed or some mysterious design choice.

This feature is in Microsoft 365 for Windows v 2006 build 12914.20000

Share document direct from Save dialog

Also new on the Save dialog is ‘Choose Collaborators’ a quick way to share a document with others.  People can be entered with the choice of ‘Can edit’ or ‘Can view-only’ (aka Read Only).

Modal dialog – really?

This new Save box must seem like a good idea to Microsoft.  It’s shamelessly aimed at encouraging people to save documents to the OneDrive/SharePoint/Teams cloud.

Never mind that it’s unrelated to the File | Save pane or the traditional Windows Save dialog.

Microsoft 365 now has three different Save | Save As dialogs!

The new Save dialog is modal – meaning that once it’s open you can’t work on any document. Not just the doc being saved but any other file open in that program.  When there’s many documents open, it’s annoying to be stopped because of an unrelated box open elsewhere.

Customers have been complaining about unnecessary application modal dialogs for many, many years.  Microsoft doesn’t listen.

Private Annotations in Word is Save As under a fancy name

Bypass Office Backstage and get to ‘real’ Open or Save dialogs

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