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.
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.
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.
Sounds like robbery our data. Fact is we hear about data breaches all the time. Don’t allow this for your personal data.
The current US admin cannot be trusted not to force Microsoft to handover your data and use it against you.
It will be done before it gets to court.
It really is.
There are laws against going into someone’s garden and picking their fruit, because fruit is valuable produce. This is slightly different, they invite you into their website, then they steal your valuable data for their commercial purposes without paying you for it.
Oh no! Guess I better continue to use Libre Office instead.
And Collabora Office on mobile devices :)
It seems like every new day has a new reason to remind me why I’m glad I ditched Microsoft.
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.
and i flipped the switch to libreoffice long ago.
microsoft office has been bloated slow garbage for quite a while now. my condolences for people forced to use it.
I switched too but I would be lying if I said it is easy. The muscle memory and expectations are there for office, I hate them but it is hard for people to leave them.
it’s sometimes not. i’m not an office power user for a while, but it took me a good while to truly acclimate to linux. i imagine it could take some time to get used to libreoffice.
in any case onlyoffice is also good imo, and they made it feel much more like ms office if that’s your thing.
Meh. That’s why LibreOffice exists.
Thanks, I hate it.
and that changes everything
Does not change my opinion :-)
This company is becoming more and more toxic, and everybody should abandon their stuff ASAP!
Congratulations, you’ve just won the play stupid games and win stupid prices game.
No reason to complain, your documents can now be handed over to the authorities quickly and efficiently without any inconvenience to you, and we will also use them to train AI.
In the near future:
You can now open all your documents from OneDrive for the low price of 10 cent per document per time you open it. Also you don’t have to worry about where to store anymore, it’s all completely locked in to Microsoft formats, so you can’t really move it to another platform anyway.Microsoft is steering customers to Linux
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.
Who the fuck uses word except children?
a metric shit ton of businesses.
Like small ones? I’ve worked for a few corporations, and the only Microsoft products we used (other than the OS) were Outlook and Excel. We were specifically told DO NOT OPEN WORD DOCUMENTS. Maybe that’s just me.
Lol what. Every person I know that works in a corporate environment uses Microsoft’s entire suite. Never heard of anything else. I don’t like it either, but every corporation does it.
What the fuck corporations are you working for? I worked for Petco, Geico, and Spectrum (I’m sorry, I know their services suck). We were taught and TOLD not to do that. We were told IF YOU OPEN A MICROSOFT OFFICE DOCUMENT, IT’S A PHISHING EMAIL AND IT’S GOING TO RUN A MACRO.
Dog, I’m honestly getting pissed off.
Hey everyone! This guy’s getting pissed off about being wrong. See? No one cares.
Who are you?
i work for a large corp and ms products are forced on us. :/
Damn, same, but not word
I’d bet the majority of office jobs?
Lol. I had this conversation with a coworker. We were tasked with building product documentation and user guide. I suggested we use LaTeX or typst so it looks professional, and follows proper formatting. They want to use word. Word always looks like janky shit, and edits are a disaster even if you follow best-practises
People whose employers retain a Microsoft contract
Nowadays it seems like the children are mostly using Google Docs thanks to their time on Chromebooks in school.
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.
