Microsoft Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward
Your Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward - gHacks Tech News
The breaking point for me was when I was showered with Copilot+ pop-ups on every single hover. Let me fucking copy/cut/paste/format in peace. I never asked for any of this, and neither did any user of any level of expertise.
Switched to OnlyOffice as it felt to perfectly answer my needs. There are still some quirks with non-UTF-8 documents, but you know what, I'd rather iron those issues out than be shoved a product I didn't request nor need at every single interaction I have.
I highly encourage anyone that hasn't done already to explore alternatives to the M*crosoft Suite, if they haven't done it by now. Every update is just the worst form of enshittification known to humankind. Can't wait to have an intrusive slop AI agent tell me how to do my Maths in the Calculator app next.
Apps? It's programs and applications!
Jesus christ. So glad I ditched MS. It's like getting out of a cult - once you see it looking in from the outside, you finally realize how terrible it is.
I would love to switch to LibreOffice (or similar) but I haven’t been able to find a way to get tables to work in the same way they do in Excel, and that’s a deal breaker for me. None of the suggested approaches come close to being able to select a range, press ctrl+t and immediately be able to filter/sort/lookup using column names from anywhere in the document. I use that feature dozens of times a day, and so does everyone in my circles that deals with financial data.
What about OnlyOffice?
You can purchase the Microsoft apps , word, excel, PowerPoint, as a package that you own. There are no upgrades. You own them.
I am in the process of moving to Linux and Libreoffice at the moment. I'm working at getting myself off of Onedrive.
Once complete I will start the process of getting off Google. I've been using Proton for years and I am going to remove any other online support.
Why I use libreoffice.
Holy fucking shit, what absolute trash
They’re prepared to do anything to get real user data for AI training. This little change gives them easily millions of files per day accidentally saved to cloud.
Microsoft is recognizing that their biggest threat to MS Word is Google Docs, a product they underestimated in the beginning as being a serious choice for word processing.
Saving in the cloud means automatic backups and access from all your devices. Increasingly, people are willing to choose that over the real privacy benefits of local storage.
If you mind that Word documents are stored in the cloud by default, you need to modify the default setting
...or just use some other app for your private documents and Word only for work-related stuff or such. I use Word/Office at work and have absolutely no issue with all the documentation being saved in the cloud. But for private stuff I would have to think twice if I want this.
I switched to OnlyOffice for my work files. I have had no compatibility issues with my coworkers
At this point that’s almost like ransomware.
At this point, why even have desktop apps at all?
Teams and Outlook are basically busy glorified web browsers that load the online version... Now word is going to send your shit to the cloud whether you like it or not?
Google docs does this, but they don't have a desktop app to deceive you with. You create the doc, and edit it where it is, on the cloud, using a web interface that's vaguely "word"-like.
The only people this will "help" is all the inept business people that can't figure out where to put their data so it's not lost. There's lots of those.
This might be when I finally jump ship and go to Linux. I should do Mint, right?
Yes. You may distro hop eventually, but you will not go wrong starting there from Windows.
I stuck with it. I am OK that somebody else did a really nice configuration out of the box for me. It's still an open Linux system. I make embedded computers do the right thing all day at work, and at home I've been getting more outside work done than ever. So any projects like setting up an Arch install to learn more about linux will at minimum have to wait for winter.
Swoopin in to recommend: https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/
Before doing anything you can try out different Linux Distros at Distrosea
The most important choice from the beginner is not even the distro, but what window manager to use, that will be your first interface and you need to be comfortable with it first.
Having switched many relatives to Linux recently too, Mint will be your best jumping off point for a familiar feel and pain free experience as someone new to Linux. If you love that and find yourself wanting more, then the world is your oyster! I started on Mint and ultimately settled on Fedora Plasma after trying out a half dozen different options.
Remember that most major distros now offer live ISOs, which means you can easily try them out before committing to an install.
Just do mint. If you don't like it, try another. I went mint and it felt comfortable and worked so I'm happy with it. Might try Debian next time for more stability and less cutting edge.
Aurora is my go-to nowadays
You have to click through to a third save dialogue just to choose “Browse my files…”.
this operating system still costs like $100
/ per year
Operating system sold separately. Some assembly required.
Who the fuck pays full price for windows? Just buy an oem license for like $15.
i don't need a license to kick myself in the nuts
This creates a circus act to protect documents. Thank goodness for great alternatives. I use a mix of LibreOffice and Cryptpad. Suits me perfectly.
Not to be used to train AI. We promise.
LLM's out here running wild. How Rude.Maybe I should switch to Linux again.
They'd break SO MANY international and data security laws if they tried breaking into people's OneDrive, it'd be hilarious to see the number of lawsuits they'd lose by default.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Windows!
laughs quietly in Linux
Libre office does the job for me! Auto save on cloud sucks. At least you can turn it off! For now.
Auto save on cloud sucks.
Depends on the cloud. I like my files being automatically backed up to my private Nextcloud server.
I understand, everyone has different options on this! I prefer to choose what stays local and what on cloud.
To anyone thinking "LibreOffice still has issues", here's the LibreOffice donation page to help them fix it up and be rid of MS Office forever.
I’d rather use old ass word perfect at this point
Just use libreoffice
I'd rather chisel text onto stone tablets than that bs.
I actually installed WordPerfect 6 for DOS and MS Word for DOS recently. They're very relaxing for writing and fast too. Then I use LibreOffice to convert the documents to more modern formats if needed.
That’s dope. I recently read that George R.R. Martin still uses WordStar. Maybe that’s why that dude can’t finish a book series.
this has been goin on for like a year now. i have an offline profile with no onedrive on my machine, and tried the latest office. theres a slider saying autosave, but i was unable to use it. felt kinda weird that there is no autosave feature anymore. turns out autosave has been a cloud save option, and poor excel was not able to savemy private data to the onedrive datafarm. also the new excel is super slow compared to like the 2016 version, which indicates that theres more bloat under the hood.
The slider you're mentioning is specifically for cloud sync, correct. But as far as I know Word still does the thingy where it will periodically snapshot and allow you to recover previous versions.
I'm not 100% sure because I don't use it at home anymore but I still do at work.
I still use Wordpad to write all my gay dinosaur erotica, am I safe?
Last time I checked there was Copilot integration in NotePad. So I wouldn't assume WordPad is safe from anything
Chuck Tingle, is that you?
I wish...
Mr Tingle, its an honor, and you should be at the moment, but please consider a more proper way of writing literature such as LaTeX or Vim
"or" ?
Scrivener ftw
Cool It finally gets Google docs core functionality after only 20 years. How innovative.
Google Docs has been a thing for 20 years? Wow I feel old
Started using Google Docs around 4th/5th grade. I'm a Sophomore in college now...
Still like Google online collaboration more than Microsoft online collaboration, so it's still dogshit after 20 years...
"Fuck you, Microsoft." -Everyone, at all times
Even if you're not ready to come to Linux, you're definitely ready to switch to LibreOffice. I dare you to try it.
“Fuck you, Microsoft.” -Everyone, at all times
Eh, that game where you had two gorillas standing on buildings lobbing exploding bananas at each other was pretty cool.
I'm using OnlyOffice bins on linux and find it to be a fantastic suite for my (minimal) uses. Not sure how it works on Windows though.
Writer and Impress should cover Word and Powerpoint perfectly. Even if your colleagues use Windows, you can still open them just fine.
Excel though is troublesome, especially those with coded VBA or some plugins from companies. But for basic Excel? Calc can do the job ok too.
Yeah I got through school and could work just fine now with Calc. I'm sure it breaks when you get fancy but not that many people get that fancy.
https://www.libreoffice.org/ for anyone who wants microsoft to stop messing with their office apps.
There is also only office which has better compatibility with MSOffice file types
Downside is ties to Russia and performance is really bad, as I understand it's an Electron web app, not a native application. It also won't save to network shares properly and will lose your file if you do.
Don't ever save your files directly on a samba share with only office. Lost hours of work twice . It doesn't keep recovery files.
This here.
I wish Only Office got as much fanfare as LibreOffice. The UI is much closer to Microsoft Office and it tends to have better compatibility.
I have both installed though and use them both lol.
I second this. There's a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it's not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it's been great.
This is certainly about making sure your files are safe and definitely not about stealing your data for training AI. /s
Don't let Murdersoft steal your data. Don't contribute to their corruption or genocide assistance.
Step 1: https://fedoraproject.org/
Step 2: https://www.libreoffice.org/
Thanks, going to try out LibreOffice. Does it has same (or similar) functions as Word itself?
It's designed to be very similar. If you are already familiar with Word, you should feel right at home.
I’ve been using it for over a decade now and have only rarely come across broken documents due to proprietary features. If you’re making docs for yourself, I’d say it’s pretty much a 100% replacement. Things can get a bit more fucky if you’re having exchanges where you edit with Libre and someone else edits with Word. But other than that, they’re pretty darn close.
No. That's the point. LibreOffice does not send your data to Microsoft.
LibreOffice is what Microsoft Office WAS without the bugs. If Word and Excel worked for you before the cloud, Libre is golden.
Pretty much. It was OpenOffice years ago, but then Oracle got involved and so all the devs left and put a new name on it.
As a clueless individual, how are they assisting genocide?
For today, you can call me Jeeves. To learn more, a quick search for "microsoft genocide" or "microsoft gaza" will give you the answers.
Working hand in hand with the Israeli government in mass surveillance and (likely) AI-generated targeting data.
im using a cracked version, i also dont have cloud for ms, no problem there.
I suppose this means Microsoft will not count Word doc file sizes against users' cloud storage quotas, right? Right??
🤣
It'll be like Google: everything goes in, nothing comes out unless you jump through difficult hoops, price continually goes up.
No, they upload your file, delete the local file, then oopsie, you ran out of cloud storage, please pay $99/month to access your files.
Mario_Kart8_deluxe.iso.docx
Anakinsmirk.jpg
I'll just use LibreOffice, but... a lot of people just don't care. Which does also impact us.
Let's say this huge breach of security and privacy is okay.
How are Microsoft ensuring these sensitive documents are not being transferred via or stored on servers located in hostile countries with lax data laws (such as foreign nations like the USA?).
Microsoft has already said it doesn't matter where your data is stored, it isn't safe from the United States.
But you can change this behaviour in settings, it's just the default for now.
So, if you don't trust Microsoft to handle your documents, but still somehow use MS Word and OneDrive, for the moment you can still stop it from saving your Word documents to their servers.
wdym, that's the point
tell your friends.
OnlyOffice gang https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx
How will this work for (for example) cibersecurity companies that have reports full of client's vulnerabilities and can't have them hosted in third parties?
I would guess we're on the fuck around part and your question will be answered on the find out part
By their admins setting HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\General PreferCloudSaveLocations to 0 using GPO probably
A cybersecurity firm knows better.
tip: do not write about the revolution, short stories, hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, or your teenage angst and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
So just bpmb threats and realistic beastiality. Got it.
I love to kill cops in GTA
Ensure to make sure every doc has 17 giant sized images saying FU MS
LibreOffice. No need for MS Office, ever
Tell that to my companies president.
Meanwhile here I am with ghostwriter
I used nano for over 10y, I'm a nvimer now.
I just can't ever go back to office UI stuff. For my designs I still have Krita and Inkscape.
This feature doesn't even work.
So many times I'll save a word doc, attach it to outlook, and it'll silently attach an older version of the word doc.
Word says its up to date, one drive says its up to date, but outlook still gets an old version.
It takes hours to resolve. Everything Microsoft wastes so much of my time.
You can turn it off. Opt-out is still bullshit.
you can turn it off (for now)
You can make yourself believe that you turned it off for now*
until your computer force reboots itself in the middle of the day to do updates it didn't tell you about, and you log back in and later that night find it uploaded all your shit to the cloud and just for good measure deleted some of it too as a fuck you
it's the Microsoft way
I don't trust Microsoft not to flip that switch back when I'm not looking.
Microsoft all about opting out rather than opting in.
Perks of not signing into Windows/Office with a Microsoft account.... Oh wait
Good thing I stopped using MS WORD a long time ago.
I stopped at MS Word 2.0, when the Microsoft people agreed with me that it was pretty much broken for large files, and pointed me to an FTP site where there was a new version... which also was broken. Long story short, that's when I first installed Linux and ran LaTeX and Applixware.
Which means an AI scans it...
Switched to linux. No regrets so far.
Of the installs I've done in the past year, none were absolutely flawless. One had an error that I just hit "retry" and it worked. One required some serious googling but I found the fix on reddit (rip). One didn't work at all, and I switched to a different distro that did work.
I'm not going to lie and sugarcoat it, but once I got past the install everything has been fine. Hopefully things will continue to improve
What if I dont use M$ account? So it is just a local user, then where does Word back up to?
This is why Microsoft is making it damn near impossible to set up a new computer without logging into a Microsoft account. Luckily the OOBE trick still works (for now).
Office 365 requires an account to validate the license. Potentially it might work differently for the long term licensed versions (which features released to O365 now wouldn't reach until the next LTSC release), but I've not performed the initial install and licensing of those for clients yet
Or for home users who aren't already invested in a Microsoft ecosystem your best bet is to just use Libre Office
Edit: I accidentally made Office exclusive to leap years!
I'm interested in how they're gonna enforce this with my copy of word 2007.
They auto updated my 2007 to 365 when my firewall crashed (I had the updated blocked) and then required a subscription. This has happened twice and is such a pain in the ass to reverse. I switched to Libreoffice.
Interesting, i haven't had any issues on that front
the new libreoffice won't run on your vista.
I do wonder how my copy of Word 2010 at my work is going to do this.
Seriously, Microsoft!?!?
Is this on Macs too?!?
Is this on Macs too?!?
Not mine, then again I use nothing Microsoft on my Mac.
I actually appreciate this. The only place I use Word is at work, and nothing I create in Word at work is 'mine'. I do not care at all about the security of things I do at work (that's for our IT Security team to care about), and all this means is that if I accidentally screw up, or if my computer just up and dies on me... all of my work files should be 'safe'.
My employer has been going very hard towards ensuring that our work computers can ONLY be used for work purposes. Once I accepted this and embraced it I found that I'm now 100% free of Microsoft for anything personal, and it is amazing.
there is a reaching hand that goes further than just using it for work.
lets say you open libreoffice writer and write a party invite. you send this party invite to a friend - they are invited to your party.
your friend opens it in MSWord, its uploaded to the cloud and scraped for all of your personal data to train their AI and to be sold to the lowest bidder.
you had and want nothing to do with microsoft, but they are still harvesting your data.
Export to a .pdf, automatically opens by default in user browser via local storage as a reader, bypasses MS
This is still problematic shit though, on the same level as enabling Recall by default and encrypting W11 storage devices by default.
I agree, however you're never going to be able to fully control things that you've sent out for other people. Even this post can, and likely will, end up as training data for AI. 'The only winning move is not to play' applies to a lot of things in life, and if you truly want to protect your data then the best move is to not create any data. The second best move is to not share any data that you've created.
I mean, I'm in the same boat. This doesn't effect me except for work stuff. But here's the thing, all of my documents are already backed up to the cloud via OneDrive settings. So this is redundant at best.
At the end of the day, one of the reasons I hate the MS experience is because they push things on you. Its not your PC, its theirs. Hey, you want to use OneDrive? No? Are you sure? No? Are you really sure? No? Why don't I just turn it on for you so you can see how great it is. You must have turned it off by accident, let me turn it back on. OK, OK I get it you really don't want to use onedrive. Oh, I forgot that fact once our annual update came out and undid that setting. You straight out uninstalled onedirve and altered your registry? Ok, how about we just upload Word documents for you.
Part of why I still hate it at work; work knows almost everything about me. People with poor understanding of PII have my personal information, and use MS products. Microsoft knows all of that, and everything that I type, the notes I make, the phrases I use, inferences on my interests, and can combine that with other profiles. It helps put together a much more complete picture and profile of me and why I interface with. And I can't opt out, can't use Linux, and can't just go somewhere else to avoid it.
I recently started using VisiData and it's amazing.
Silence! The great Microsoft has decreed that from this day forward your documents belong to them! No dissension!
Proceed to the payment portal to pay your offerings immediately. Only those worthy enough to pay for the ExtraTM and PremiumTM tiers will be allowed to use the File menu.
LibreOffice does everything I need except that their version of Power Point (forgot the name lol) is a mess to work with in terms of making the slide deck visual appealing. Automatic guide lines, snapping and smartart, to name a few.
Thinking about onlyoffice but I'm not sure if I can trust them since I read about then trying to hide their ties to Russia.
ODT is better than whatever abomination Microsoft calls a document format.
I don't get it, does Microsoft WANT everyone to stop using their products? First they fuck up their OSes, then they start planting shady shit in their OSes, and now it's down to every single goddamned piece of software they poop out! What in the fuck are they even doing!
Office is the product that helped keep Microsoft ticking over. The world is too dependant on Office and people won’t abandon it just because of this.
My fat fingers keep trying to type Microsoft Orifice.
I'm pretty sure most regular users will not even notice the charge, and find it useful down the line. Cause one day they will mess something up, complain to MS that they "lost their work", will be pointed to the cloud where everything was synced, and rejoice. Most users don't really care about the implications that their documents are in the cloud.
They're rent-seeking, more than they already are. The data must flow for training, actively burned bridges be damned.
This will make happy many companies...
"No, I don't think it will"
I have a Word document saved into my ‘personal account vault’ which is for personal thoughts (like a diary). Does this mean, they’ll automatically upload this too into their cloud?
If that’s the case, not sure what to do. Tempted to go back to old school diary but risk the chance of my family finding it.
Markdown is great for that. There also are some WYSIWYG and a lot of side-view editors. If you still want Word-alike, there's lots of office suites aside from Office 365. Or is it about saving notes to cloud? Even more solutions just for that, aside from plain file-sync clouds.
Thanks, I’ll look into Markdown!
Or is it about saving notes to cloud?
No, that’s not it. I just want a Word-alike thing that allows me to put a password on it and use it as a ‘modern diary’ (like how you can make chapters and such in Word).
Not sure if I explained it well, English isn’t my native language. So wasn’t sure how to explain it
Time to learn another language then mix them
Siu Mit USA De Fa Si Si Zu Yi
The Only Good Fa Xi Si Zu Yi Ze Hai Sei Zo Ge
(Destroy fascism in the USA
The only good fascist is a dead one)
Now just need to transpose that and replace some characters. Of course, making it offline would greatly reduce government/corporate surveillance threats. As long as your family aren't cryptographers, they won't be able to decrypt it.
(Its Tri-Lingual. Cantonese Jyutping, Mandarin Pinyin, and English of course. Romanization of characters makes it harder to guess words especially when it gets transposed with a bunch of others.)
No big corporation or state institution handling vast amounts of customer data will not allow this. Also really bad for regular consumer too. Microsoft servers will become treasure trove for hackers.
No they won't
Gotta feed that AI!
sounds like a 'service problem' someone once spoke about...
acquire your ms office 'elsewhere' and never link it to a ms account. same with windows. no msa, no 'cloud' to save to.
and there is a service problem here.
Me me guess - is this so they can train the LLM using the data we're 'giving' them? F U!!
This will be good for the post I saw yesterday where someone was working on some story for weeks and lost it all because they didn't have a backup lol
Isn't this already the default?
I have to change it on every single fuckin document already. Have done so for years now at work.
// I don't use Word outside of work...
It's on per default when signed in to OneDrive. Actually a really nice feature tbh. However, you will be promoted to hell and back if you aren't signed in to OneDrive. I like the feature for work but I don't like the idea of it being the default setting.
yet another reason to ditch microsoft
Some executive noticed that they can't sell you larger cloud storage if you haven't used it up.
Then someone on the office copilot team said they wished they had access to more comprehensive data about what people write with office apps and the rest is history.