Stop Office BACKUP THIS DOCUMENT prompt

Anonymous
2023-11-04T15:55:46+00:00

Excel and Word keep displaying a banner when I open a file "BACKUP THIS DOCUMENT - Access this file anywhere with OneDrive included in your subscription"

I have a backup system I use that I like and I don't need OneDrive to backup my files. How do I get OneDrive/Office 365/Windows to stop giving me this prompt?

I click the "X" or Schedule Backup Later to make the banner go away, but it just comes back a little while later. I've opened up the OneDrive app from the system tray and unselected everything from the OneDrive backup, but none of this helps and the prompt keeps coming back.

How do I get this to stop?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-18T15:54:25+00:00

    If your goal is to prevent the nag in Word and Excel files while keeping your folder connection to OneDrive, the BAT file or Powershell script methods work very well. For instructions, see the two comments at page 3 of this thread, about 2/3 down (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/stop-office-backup-this-document-prompt/24143ada-e447-4c72-aa37-4324c88a5e7c). I use the BAT file approach, which has worked very well (with occasional misses). Microsoft really should let us eliminate the nag, but they probably won't. At least this tactic works, though who knows for how long. You have to use other methods to prevent automatic "backups" (transfers) to OneDrive.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-04-18T15:05:23+00:00

    Yes, that hack is mentioned many times in this thread. Unfortunately, I use OneDrive on this computer, and unlinking it would create as many problems as it solves. Still waiting for Office to make it possible to permanently end this nag. Of course, they won't, but I can hope.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-04-18T14:46:12+00:00

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-01-27T15:57:15+00:00

    FWIW, I think I figured it out. From early screencaps, it seems that Microsoft originally spelled the verb phrase "BACK UP" as "BACKUP," which is, of course, the noun form. So that may have been what you were reacting to. (I realize that you'll probably never see this, having unsubscribed from this thread, but here it is for anyone else who wonders.) Best wishes

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-01-27T15:39:18+00:00

    Tim,

    You wrote, "Very old message, I know, but I'm curious what misspelling you see. Everything is spelled correctly in the nag banner that appears in my installation of Word."

    I'm sorry, but I don't remember what I wrote about that. I'm reasonably sure I was correct about it, and I examined many of the responses to this problem during the last ten minutes but could not find anything that I wrote. My problem is that I have a subscription with Microsoft, and I back up all my files to their cloud every day, but I don't work on the cloud. I still occasionally get the suggestion to back up my docs to the cloud, but I decided there was absolutely nothing I could do about it so now I simply ignore the suggestion.

    I'm going to unsubscribe from this thread because it's more trouble than it's worth.

    Good Luck in the future.

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