May 01 2019
02:23 AM
- last edited on
Feb 06 2023
03:42 AM
by
TechCommunityAP
May 01 2019
02:23 AM
- last edited on
Feb 06 2023
03:42 AM
by
TechCommunityAP
In any Office 365 application, such as Word, Excel or PowerPoint, the titlebar shows an "AutoSave" button. Upon turning this function on, a dialog pops up where you choose which OneDrive to save the document to, and where you enter a name for the file. See screenshots below.
However, this dialog does not allow choosing in which folder on the OneDrive you want to save the document. All files get saved automatically in the "OneDrive/Documents" default folder.
Is there a way to change the behavior of Office apps, so that the user can select in which folder on the OneDrive the file will be stored in by AutoSave?
May 07 2020 11:58 PM
@Muzzo4444 Oh how fascinating, I did not realize that. I also realized that there is a setting in OneDrive that I needed to change. If I right click on the OneDrive icon in the taskbar, then Settings --> Office I needed to check the "Use Office applications to sync Office files that I open" option. It was off previously, and once I made this change it seems to work when I turn on autosave even after opening the file from the folder.
May 08 2020 12:07 AM - edited May 08 2020 12:08 AM
.TurnerWFU Many thanks for that little Tip. I did not have that setting turned on in the OneDrive Settings either, so I have just repeated my test with that setting turned on, and the AutoSave worked when I opened the doc from the folder!
May 08 2020 12:12 AM
@Muzzo4444 Slowly but surely we can accumulate a record of what works for others when they come searching...
May 08 2020 07:45 AM
May 08 2020 08:09 AM
I attempted to reply here and my reply went nowhere ... is the thread now closed?
I'm trying to get this to work on Windows 8.1, on a Dell laptop that I upgraded not long ago from Windows 7. AutoSave worked just fine on Windows 7. It also still works fine on my other system, which is a Mac running Catalina. It's only since upgrading this computer that it has been broken.
Neither of these suggested options worked for me. Opening the document (the original of which is already saved within the OneDrive folder hierarchy, in a subfolder) from within Word, and then turning on Auto Save , only gave me the option to AutoSave the document to the root OneDrive folder.
When I right click on Settings in the OneDrive cloud taskbar icon, there is no option for Office settings at all. On the More Info item, Go To PC Settings also has no "Office" option. The defaults are all set already to save documents to OneDrive.
May 08 2020 10:37 AM
@GayzeN Hello! As a heads-up, your messages were put into an approval queue, which is our automated spam filter, which our Tech Community team checks daily and moves messages out that don't belong.
We moved your message out of it this morning. You should have received a message to that effect (the approval queue) when you posted, sorry if that wasn't communicated better!
May 08 2020 10:56 AM
Feb 02 2021 12:16 AM
Yes, this is exactly what I thought, too - but, no, it saves it to the Onedrive\Documents folder; so that I now we have two copies of the file in the Documents folder hierarchy: the newly autosaved one in the \Documents folder and the original in the subfolder it was opened from. This is why I turn off autosave and choose not to autosave my Word documents to Onedrive. I have far too often been working on a document that I subsequently realised was not the latest version I was most recently working on. It's bad for productivity.
Feb 20 2021 07:23 AM
@Muzzo4444 well but have you tried to auto save it back to the folder where you have the file originaly stored with the same filename? .... Hey, Microsoft! why it is impossible?
Apr 06 2021 10:27 AM
Sep 02 2021 05:25 PM
@jjfence I also have this exact same problem on my Windows 10 machine. On my Mac I don't have this problem. In MS office, my autosave defaults to a root folder (I know how to change the root folder). If I then manually move the file to a subfolder of my choice and reopen the file, Autosave has turned off. Does anyone have a workaround?
Sep 03 2021 09:45 AM
Sep 03 2021 10:07 AM
@nouseridleft This worked for me:
1. Turn on autosave
2. Go ahead and save the document to the default drive that appears (OneDrive for me)
3. At the top of the window to the left of the "Search" box you'll see the name of the document with a down arrow that says "Saved" or "Saving"
4. Click on the down arrow
5. Click on "Location"
6. Select the permanent location where you'd like the autosave file kept
7. Click "Move Here"
Not sure why they made this so convoluted, but at least you only have to do it once for each document.
Sep 03 2021 10:29 AM
Sep 03 2021 10:57 AM
Sep 03 2021 01:44 PM
Sep 03 2021 02:00 PM - edited Sep 03 2021 02:02 PM
@nouseridleft I tried finding the file on OneDrive and dragging it to another folder too, and get the same results as you.
Instead, after clicking autosave and saving it to OneDrive forget about the copy it just saved to OneDrive. Click on the down arrow after the file name at the very top of the window (see attached picture). When you click on the down arrow it gives you the option to save the document to the location of your choice, and when you click "Move Here" it always uses that new location to autosave your document.
Oct 22 2021 08:26 AM
David_Robbins@Paul_Van_Cotthem
I have documents in custom folders synced between my laptop and OneDrive. For no apparent reason, AutoSave turns off. When I select the slider to turn on, it shows the screen to upload to OneDrive resulting in a new document in the Documents folder. This is poor file management. Adding an option to select a directory would help.
Sep 18 2022 02:23 AM
I found registry keys that were tied to the default location:
Computer\HKEY_USERS\<User_ID>\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ServicesManagerCache\Identities\<UID>_LiveId\WLINBOX_SKYDRIVE_<UID>
The keys to edit are named:
ConnectionUriDocumentsUrl
ConnectionUriEmailAttachmentsUrl
I set these to the root path as below and now my autosave is not hidden down a rabbit hole of folders on OneDrive (the UID is the same as in the path above):
https://d.docs.live.net/<UID>/
Tested and the changes need to be made on each computer that uses the same microsoft account for access (had to change it separately on my desktop and my laptop).
Hope this helps anyone else who winds up here looking for the answer to this annoying design decision.
Jun 19 2023 09:35 AM
This thread had a lot of activity in 2020. Here we are, 3 years later, and even with Windows 11, nothing has changed. There doesn't seem to be a way to have the autosave function work except if the file is stored in onedrive>documents. I have a whole hierarchy of folders under onedrive and would like to be able to select the appropriate one for my documents created in Office 365. These are in my case created in Word, Excel or Powerpoint. Of course, I can (and do) save files "manually" in these folders but it would be a help if MS allowed me to autosave them there rather than in the default (documents) folder.