Stop Office BACKUP THIS DOCUMENT prompt

I apologize for sounding like Eeyore, but it's just a matter of time before Microsoft devises a means to negate the scripts to get rid of that idiot nag.

It is much like how they tried to push Internet Explorer on us, and now Edge. There is a reason they want to make everyone use their cloud services specifically and it isn't for our good health.

As long as Microsoft can, they will take what were once good programs for which in good faith we paid with reasonable expectation that only modifications patently user beneficial would be made in upgrades, and instead infect them like any other malicious virus with proprietary attempts to increase Microsoft "on-board income" (if you ever took a cruise you will well know what that means).

Microsoft knows despite all the threats, the vast majority of users will not switch to an open source platform. I myself have far too many lines of VBA code in my central business use Excel project to switch at this point.

Since Excel has done all i need it to do for some time (years) now i suspect my best solution is to roll it back or convert to a prior "standalone" version and attempt to freeze out any "upgrades" which Microsoft offers, cancel their 365 product entirely - i have no use for anything else they dream up to embed more useless intrusions on me masking malicious code. I have not looked into this avenue in a long time, but i guess the time once again has come - i do not think for a moment that this is the last time they will pull this unethical slime ball disgusting sewer stench fecal matter (...) garbage on the population-

I'm sure i can find prior versions of Excel, Word and Outlook somewhere around here.

Sad thing. Seemed under Gates originally they were an ethical company for many years, but once they had a virtual monopoly on a large enough population they just had to use corrupt practices. Never would have thought i would say this, but i was a fool for opposing government moves to intervene years ago; i can only hope someone who can bring forth legislation reads this - there are probably a lot of people who, given how Microsoft has changed over the years, would back legislation to break them up.

Really, really helpful workarounds!

I run some tasks routinely throughout the day to clear temp files, cookies, etc. and this will be added to that job.

Many thanks to the authors of both CMD and PS versions.

This is fantastic, thank you!

I've set up something similar, but simplified/modernized the code by using Powershell, as shown below. Of course in a corporate environment policies for batch scripts vs. Powershell scripts may drive the decision, and of course the extra security measures provided via Powershell mean that the local computer's script execution policy needs to allow this to run. For me this is easier to read and maintain, and I simply sign the script so I know it's secure and have configured my computer to allow running signed Powershell scripts; others may simply allow running all Powershell scripts, despite the vulnerabilities that opens.

Here's the Powershell equivalent of the above batch script:

$regPath = "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\KFM"

$regName = "KFMLastDismissTimestamp"

$epochMicroseconds = Get-Date (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime() -UFormat %s

$epochSeconds = [Math]::Floor($epochMicroseconds)

New-ItemProperty -Path $regPath -Name $regName -Value $epochSeconds -PropertyType DWORD -Force > $NULL

Well, until something better is found...

I have a solution that is working for me. I created a batch file that updates the "KFMLastDismissTimestamp" registry entry with the current time, then created a scheduled task to run that script each day. That fools KFM into thinking the nag banner has been dismissed within the last 24 hours, and it does not display it again.

I had first tried setting that timestamp way into the future (like 2025), but that doesn't work -- the nag screen comes back immediately. But setting it daily to the current time seems to do the trick.

The batch file content is attached below if anyone else wants to go this route.

@echo off 

setlocal 

call :GetEpochTime EPOCH_TIME 

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\KFM /v KFMLastDismissTimestamp /t REG_DWORD /d %EPOCH_TIME% /f 

goto :EOF 

:GetEpochTime 

setlocal enableextensions 

for /f %%x in ('wmic path win32_utctime get /format:list ^| findstr "="') do ( 

    set %%x) 

set /a z=(14-100%Month%%%100)/12, y=10000%Year%%%10000-z 

set /a ut=y*365+y/4-y/100+y/400+(153*(100%Month%%%100+12*z-3)+2)/5+Day-719469 

set /a ut=ut*86400+100%Hour%%%100*3600+100%Minute%%%100*60+100%Second%%%100 

endlocal & set "%1=%ut%" & goto :EOF

Having had no success so far with any of the suggested remedies (registry changes) for this defect, I looked into the Group Policy Editor.

I found a policy "Save documents to OneDrive by default" that looked promising and Disabled it as shown in the screen grab. I'm running Windows 10 Pro, and the policy description says it applies to Windows 8.1, but (hoping that just the description hadn't been updated) it seemed like a worthwhile test.

Sad to report, the nag came back in Word and Excel 5 days later.