Microsoft Word attempts to save to Sharepoint instead of local drive

OMG thank you so much Alec for posting here. FINALLY somebody else that confirms I'm not crazy. Like I don't know what's up with these Microsoft agents first they tell you it's a by-design, built-in feature, then they try to tell you what your problem is and provide you with solutions that obviously don't work.

Hi Remboy and others,

We also have this problem with duplicate files.  The OneDrive client works perfectly with other application using the local sync folder directly. It's just the Office Upload center causing problems with Office Applications even though we have Office Sync disabled in the OneDrive settings. Two months back Office was working fine, just recently for us it started failing and causing the duplicate files.

Bob

Just to confirm, at the time of posting:

Regardless of Office Sync opt-out settings, all Office 2016 applications are exhibiting one of two opposite behaviours when opening and saving files directly from / to a local instance of a OneDrive folder, depending on whether the file is created inside or outside of that OneDrive folder:

Steps to reproduce:

Case 1: Office file is created outside of the local instance of a OneDrive folder and moved into it.

   1.) Create and save an Office document in any local folder outside of the local instance of a OneDrive folder.

   2.) Using Windows Explorer, move the file into the local instance of a OneDrive folder.

   3.) Open the file <- Only the local instance is accessed, not the online instance.

   4.) Save the file <- Only the local instance is accessed, not the online instance.

This is the expected behaviour: all syncing is performed as a background task by OneDrive.exe, not the Office application.

Case 2: Office file is created within the local instance of a OneDrive folder.

   1.) Create and save an Office document directly within the local instance of a OneDrive folder.

   2.) Close the file.

   3.) Open the file <- Only the online instance is accessed, not the local instance.

   4.) Save the file <- Only the online instance is accessed, not the local instance.

This is completely undesired behaviour. Office Sync opt-out settings are being ignored and all syncing is being performed at the time of opening and saving by the Office application, not OneDrive.exe.

Workaround:

The following steps will prevent the undesired behaviour described above:

In Task Manager, under the Details tab, check whether a task named 'FileCoAuth.exe' is running. If so, end the task.

In Windows Explorer, navigate to the following location:

%localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\

In that folder, you will find a sub-folder which corresponds to the current OneDrive version number (e.g. 17.3.7294.0108). In that sub-folder, find and rename the following file:

FileCoAuth.exe -> rename as FileCoAuth.exe.bak

Now, any Office file created within an Office application will save directly to the local instance of the OneDrive folder, and will continue to do so when re-opened and re-saved, or saved with a new name. OneDrive.exe will continue to perform online syncing independently in the background.

Furthermore, this restores the ability to save files directly to a local instance of the OneDrive folder from within an Office application, without the requirement to remain permanently signed in (so don't expect this workaround to last for long!).

Cheers

Jeff

Just to confirm, at the time of posting:

Regardless of Office Sync opt-out settings, all Office 2016 applications are exhibiting one of two opposite behaviours when opening and saving files directly from / to a local instance of a OneDrive folder, depending on whether the file is created inside or outside of that OneDrive folder:

Steps to reproduce:

Case 1: Office file is created outside of the local instance of a OneDrive folder and moved into it.

   1.) Create and save an Office document in any local folder outside of the local instance of a OneDrive folder.

   2.) Using Windows Explorer, move the file into the local instance of a OneDrive folder.

   3.) Open the file <- Only the local instance is accessed, not the online instance.

   4.) Save the file <- Only the local instance is accessed, not the online instance.

This is the expected behaviour: all syncing is performed as a background task by OneDrive.exe, not the Office application. .

Nice work Jeff, if I follow the steps above in your case 1 I cannot get Office to create a duplicate file.   Unfortunately I/we cannot tell users to create files outside of their local instance of OneDrive and then manually copy to the OneDrive Folder.  But this should be a good clue for MS.  Bob