Office 365 cloud features do not work when using a privacy VPN

Anonymous
2016-07-27T20:31:21+00:00

When I have a privacy VPN active (such as Private Internet Access - PIA) I can't access the cloud features on Office 365 (such as online templates, OneNote sync to the cloud, Excel or Word saving to OneDrive directly, etc). I have tried 3 different VPN solutions: PIA, NordVPN and VPNArea and they all exhibit the same issue. Is there a way to solve this or to tell Office to bypass the VPN?

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-12-04T07:14:30+00:00

    I recently found a get-around which works for my situation. It may be helpful to others.

    I turned OFF the setting that allows for collaborative editing (see picture) and the annoying "UPLOAD BLOCKED" / "you need to be online.." stopped.

    Documents still get uploaded by OneDrive from my laptop, and the updated document shows the new version as expected from my phone, or from Word and Excel Online etc., but unchecking this setting will remove the ability to collaboratively edit a document with others. A kludge, therefore, not a solution.

    The dialog is launched from OneDrive's settings. Hope this helps someone.

    Of course the question remains as to why the OneDrive app is happily connecting, whereas the Office apps are not.

    The Microsoft Store app on my Windows 10 machine still does this (sigh).

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-12-05T17:21:59+00:00

    Changing to TCP in PIA worked for me. OneNote is now syncing.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-05T03:58:44+00:00

    Changing to TCP in PIA worked for me. OneNote is now syncing. 

    I turned off the cyber sec setting and changed to tcp from udp, as suggested in a prior post. My office apps were able to autosave on One Drive. Based on this post, I re-enabled  the cybersec setting and kept the tcp option. I'm still able to autosave. I'll keep testing, but it's nice to have the cybersec enabled.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-05T05:54:12+00:00

    Thanks, I will give it a go.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-01-16T02:50:57+00:00

    After some testing,  One Drive and the Autosave feature only worked intermittently. I read a post about changing the mtu setting for the network adapter. The article is: http://www.techkhoji.com/some-websites-not-loading-in-vpn-problem-fix/amp/

    Following the article's instructions I lowered the mtu to 1472, which worked for me. After the adjustment One Drive and autosave worked properly, and websites that wouldn't open did. 

    I'll keep testing, but for now the mtu size change appears promising. 

    The article also mentions changing DNS settings if mtu change does not work. Instructions are given for that, too.

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