Microsoft is adding yet another push for customers to save all their documents to OneDrive. This time inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
OneDrive is Microsoft’s preferred place to save files and they cite various benefits to cloud storage. The company ignores the downsides to OneDrive and the right of customers to choose where to save files without pestering about their ‘wrong’ choice.
For some time, Windows users have been tricked into moving all their files to OneDrive under the guise of ‘backup’.
Microsoft chose to limit AutoSave of files to OneDrive / Sharepoint for no good reason except to push customers into using cloud storage.
Apparently that’s not enough for Microsoft. Now they are going to add messages to Word, Excel and PowerPoint above documents that aren’t saved in a Microsoft approved way.
“BACK UP THIS DOCUMENT Share and work with others in this and other files using OneDrive” followed by an ‘Open OneDrive’ button.
There’s a close button at the far-right of the message bar but no “Don’t show this again” option. That means the message will appear for each non-OneDrive document whether you like it or not.
If you have Copilot, there’s also a compulsory ‘Copilot Summary‘ at the top. Another Microsoft intrusion taking up space before the document you want to read.
Stopping the OneDrive message
There’s no option to stop the OneDrive message in Microsoft 365 from appearing.
However, there is a way to block the “Known Folder Move” entirely and that should also stop the prompts from appearing.
Try this Registry setting:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\OneDrive
KFMBlockOptIn
Dword
1
Microsoft’s euphemism for the enforced change to saving on OneDrive is “Known Folder Move” or KFM.
Why have my files moved to OneDrive?
About Microsoft Office AutoSave, AutoRecover and other save options
