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flielguera's avatar
flielguera
Copper Contributor
Sep 22, 2026

Working with ONE DRIVE

Good evening, everyone. I’d like to ask a few questions about OneDrive:

 

If I have OneDrive active and am working on a Word document stored on my local drive, when I finish and click "Save," where is it saved—locally or on OneDrive?

 

If I pause synchronization with OneDrive—or, better yet, uninstall the OneDrive app—what happens to the files currently in the OneDrive cloud? Will they be lost?

 

I would appreciate your feedback.

 

Regards.

Luis Fernando.

onedrive
storage

1 Reply

  • Craig Long's avatar
    Craig Long
    Tin Contributor
    Sep 26, 2026

    If I have OneDrive active and am working on a Word document stored on my local drive, when I finish and click "Save," where is it saved—locally or on OneDrive?

    If you work with a file in the OneDrive folder, OneDrive updates the same file on OneDrive.com.

    "Save" saves the changes you have made to the file you are currently working on.  "Save As" lets you choose where to save the file and what to name it.  Usually, you use "Save As" when you first create a file, then use "Save" or enable "Autosave" to save your most recent changes.

    If you back up your Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders to OneDrive, saving the file in one of those folders saves it to OneDrive.

    If you pause syncing or uninstall OneDrive, changes made to your files in the local OneDrive folder can't sync to the cloud.

    See the help article "Recover your Word files and documents":  

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/word/recover-your-word-files-and-documents