Microsoft Word attempts to save to Sharepoint instead of local drive

Uhm Microsoft - This isn't really the kind of thing you would like your users to be doing? Why can't you just provide a fix please, as soon as possible. Cloud syncing is old now. It isn't rocket science anymore. Please stop your product sales folks get in the way of decent software.

C

Hi Remboy,

I understand the frustration you experienced. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The expected behavior is as following:

1.If we check the button in OneDrive settings -> Office -> use Office 2016 to sync Office files that I open, the changes will be synced in Office sync mechanism. So the changes will be saved to SharePoint first.

2.If we uncheck the button in OneDrive settings -> Office -> use Office 2016 to sync Office files that I open, the changes will be synced in OneDrive sync mechanism. So the changes will be saved to local OneDrive. If we have internet, then sync to SharePoint.

We know the second scenario is your requirement. But your issue is even if you uncheck that option, changes will be saved to cloud first (Online version). We have checked this in our side, but we can't repro.

For the current situation, you may try following steps to see if there is any improvement:

1.Right click the sync icon -> settings -> Account->Unlink this PC.

2.Log into the Windows system as Administrator > open command prompt > run taskkill /f /im OneDrive.exe

3.For 64-bit Windows, run %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\OneDriveSetup.exe /uninstall to uninstall OneDrive (For 32-bit Windows, replace SysWOW64 tosystem32)

4.Access this path: C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive and make sure all documents and folders are cleared.

5.Reinstall OneDrive. The latest version is 17.3.7294.0108

6.Untick the option "use Office 2016 to sync Office files that I open". Then test again.

If the issue persists after installing the new version of OneDrive sync client, we notice your SR has been escalated to the escalation team, you may monitor that for any new updates.

Regards,

Sky

I am seeing this issue as primarily a function of the way Office application seem to default to opening the "Sharepoint" link to the files once they have been saved. If we could configure Office applications to default to opening the files only from the local OneDrive folder this would become a non-issue. I have tried changing the default file location settings in Word and it had no impact. The problem is quite simple. The user is saving a file to the local OneDrive folder, and then when they click the recent documents link to open it later, it goes to the online "Sharepoint" location to open it. This causes unwanted behavior, such as duplicated files or issues with missing data due to delays in the synchronization. This is not that complicated from a conceptual perspective. Just help us configure Word to stick to the local OneDrive location for both file save and file open. - Just my 2 cents.

Just an additional note. We have tried all of the settings and procedures you have recommended and they have had no impact.

2.If we uncheck the button in OneDrive settings -> Office -> use Office 2016 to sync Office files that I open, the changes will be synced in OneDrive sync mechanism. So the changes will be saved to local OneDrive. If we have internet, then sync to SharePoint.

We know the second scenario is your requirement. But your issue is even if you uncheck that option, changes will be saved to cloud first (Online version). We have checked this in our side, but we can't repro.

Hi Sky,

I am seeing this problem on every machine tested.  Make sure you are creating a new file in Word and then save it to a local OneDrive folder. (notice the save takes a bit longer to complete, than a non synced folder)  If you look at Jeff's post above it will describe the exact behavior and give some good clues.  Namely saving a file locally to a non OneDrive folder and then manually copying it to the OneDrive folder will give the expected behavior moving forward.  Office sync unchecked in all cases.   -Bob