How do I download documents from Word online to my desktop?

Anonymous
2023-11-29T12:36:44+00:00

Hello,

I'm trying to get students to submit work as Word documents (I need to be able to cut/paste things from the documents because of an activity). Neither they nor I can download or upload their documents as Word documents. When they try to upload them to our LMS, they appear as pdfs. When they email me the link to their documents, I can view them online, but I can't save them to my computer with the rest of the class's documents. When I try to download them, it simply opens the file again in another browser tab. There is nothing in my browser's downloads, so it's not even attempting to download the file.

How can I either direct the student to upload their file as a workable Word document or download their documents as Word documents so I can manipulate them and save them?

I've seen a lot of questions about this but no actual answers. There was a mention of Onedrive in one response, but I don't use Onedrive at all because it interferes with my Dropbox. I just want to download the file, not save it to another online cloud like Onedrive.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For education | Windows

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-01-10T01:19:16+00:00

    I have no solutions to your problem, but I wanted to let you know you aren't alone. I have exactly the same problem. I teach and have to deal with students navigating all this ridiculousness. I can't and don't want to use OneDrive - and have it disabled. I have resorted to using Open Office, a free, open source version of MS Office. This is so frustrating. My deepest sympathies.

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  3. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-01-04T13:10:48+00:00

    You can still buy a perpetual-license version of Office (Office 2021 is the current version) or buy a subscription to Microsoft 365. Both will give you locally installed desktop versions of the Office apps. Both push OneDrive very hard (as does Windows 11, which, by default, puts the Documents folder inside the OneDrive folder), but you don't have to use OneDrive. You can choose to "Save to computer by default" and disable syncing to OneDrive.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-01-04T12:28:18+00:00

    This worked for me. It is ridiculous that "Download Copy to Computer" does not work. It is the 21st century and people have been downloading files for decades now. Fix your program.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-12-20T22:53:43+00:00

    I use dropbox. I can't use onedrive because it interferes with dropbox's syncing.

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