Stop Office BACKUP THIS DOCUMENT prompt

Ha ha good luck with that. Libre is the best alternative I have found and despite being "mostly" Office compatible it sill mungs some of the less conventional page layouts (i.e. anything in tables, or columns, or with embedded pictures, or spreadsheet segments, or, well anything not straight text, pretty much). And yeah, it is quite slow to start up initially but once loaded isn't too bad - not in my experience, anyway.

There's another quite promising suite called WPS that I haven't had a chance to do any kind of in-depth testing on but it does look nicer than Libre (my opinion. YMMV).

Lots of comparisons available (distrust anyone who says OpenOffice is any good though. That fork has all but fizzled out and hasn't been updated regularly for a couple of years) - they all seem to think Libre is the best of the bunch: -

https://www.techradar.com/news/best-microsoft-office-alternative

https://www.g2.com/products/mobisystems-officesuite/competitors/alternatives

https://officesuite.com/blog/productivity/the-best-microsoft-office-alternatives-in-2024/ https://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft-office-suite/

Microsoft requires access to your spreadsheet to analyze your private activities, report suspicious terrorist or patriotic activity to law enforcement, check for compliance with the fine print in your licensing agreement, determine possible changes that will result in maximum inconvenience, construct a behavioral profile on you, and, of course, to enhance user experience. Be thankful they are not (yet) throwing total screen blocking pop-up ads at you!

Generally, Microsoft is capable of implementing needed changes in their products. The fact that the backup prompts continue indicates that they don't really care if they annoy the user and they have no intent to correct the problem. Eventually, they will probably make it impossible to use local storage for your work.

I am reminded of the 1960's when one company, IBM, dominated the computer industry. They used semi-corrupt sales practices on the corporate managers, like sending gorgeous young women, etc. Remember: in computing, the practitioners never choose the tools; that is done by the managers. IBM was high minded and arrogant. And then look what happened to them.

Other operating systems and office products are now lurking, waiting for Microsoft to make a fatal fumble... Computing knowledge is too widely dispersed for Microsoft to enjoy a monopoly.

You are missing the obvious answer: MS has done the market research, and has done the analysis, and has determined that they have more to gain from coercing users into "cloud storage" (a very high-profit market) than they might lose to the few that are sufficiently alienated to find a non-Microsoft alternative.

I generally like Microsoft and their products (and full disclosure, I own a fair amount of MSFT stock). I hate what they are doing with cloud service engagement, i.e., "nagging" and coercion, and I have written letters to board members about that. But I don't think they will listen. Their "Market Analysis Team" informs their view as to what is going to be more profitable, and that's what their decisions will reflect.

Since I don't use OneDrive, I uninstalled it entirely. So far, the "backup" banner has stopped.

It's Baaaack!

I've been running the registry patch every day to reset the nag date.

But now, the nag is back in Word (and, I assume, every other Office app).

There must be some new code that uses a different reminder switch.

Any ideas?

Still working for me (so far), in Word and Excel. Are you sure your script is running successfully?

Check the value at

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\KFM, "KFMLastDismissTimestamp"

You can convert the decimal number (the one in parenthesis) to a standard date using an online converter. Search the web for "epoch time converter", and enter that number. If the corresponding date does not reflect the last time you ran the script, then the script isn't running successfully.