How to autosave files to local disk and avoid prompt to save everytime I close?

Leon Crawford 20 Reputation points
2026-05-29T00:55:46.2666667+00:00

I want my files to autosave without prompting every time I close the file - is this possible?

99.99999% of the time I want changes saved!!

I have recently disabled Onedrive and uninstalled it.

All my files are saved to local disk now.

It seems autosave only works if it goes to the cloud.

Why can't we autosave to local disk without complicated procedures?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows
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Answer accepted by question author
Suzanne S Barnhill 279.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2026-05-29T01:05:40.07+00:00

It has never been possible to AutoSave to the local disk, and it is unlikely that this will change. It is much more practical just to get in the habit of pressing Ctrl+S very shortly after you create a new document, at intervals while you are working (more frequently when composing than when editing, based on how much work you are willing to risk losing), and before you close a document. Following this procedure, I have never lost a document. It's also not a bad idea to enable the option to save a backup file; this is not a true backup but is a copy of your next-most-recent version, which it is sometimes helpful to revert to. It will be saved in the working folder as Backup of [filename].wbk.

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  1. AI answer

    2026-05-29T00:55:58.7966667+00:00

    Word’s AutoSave feature cannot automatically save changes to purely local files on the C: drive. AutoSave only works for documents stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint in Microsoft 365.

    For local-only documents, Word falls back to the older AutoRecover mechanism, which periodically writes recovery copies to reduce data loss in a crash, but it does not silently commit changes to the actual document file or suppress the save prompt when closing. To save changes to local files, saving must still be done explicitly (for example, with Ctrl+S) or by confirming the prompt when closing.

    There is no built-in setting in Word to enable true AutoSave directly to local disk while also skipping the “Do you want to save changes?” prompt.

    If cloud storage is acceptable again in the future, saving documents to OneDrive or SharePoint will re-enable AutoSave by default.

    References:

    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

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