Forum Discussion
Office 365 AutoSave to OneDrive - how to choose the folder location where a new document is stored?
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?
Click AutoSave buttonSelect OneDrive
Selection of folder on OneDrive not possible.
- Hi!
AFAIK no! There is no settings in the office settings pane except enabling the auto save to onedrive! It is saved to the root of the onedrive only!
I’m not aware of any registry settings etc for this!
I’d suggest creating a request on onedrive uservoice:
https://onedrive.uservoice.com/ Paul_Van_CotthemAlthough you can't change the default folder for OneDrive in Office AutoSave there is a way to change the OneDrive folder WITHIN Word/Excel/Powerpoint itself but only AFTER you have saved it by any name.
To do this first AutoSave your file to OneDrive:
Once saved, click the Menu option for Version history on the same bar as AutoSave in Word:
Then click the >Location drop down - This tab also shows the OneDrive folder where your file has been saved by default and then in the next window you can move it wherever you want:
It's really typical and frustrating that Microsoft doesn't provide an option for something as basic as selecting a DEFAULT folder for AutoSave!!
- Thank you f1demon! This is exactly what I was looking for!
When I would save as to change the folder to the proper subfolder on OneDrive I was only creating a copy of the document in that subfolder, and it would turn off autosave. When I'd turn on autosave again it would automatically save it to my OneDrive/Documents folder again, so the file in my designated subfolder wouldn't get updated. Your solution above finally allowed me to save to my designated subfolder without autosave turning off.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?
Dear All
As this discussion thread talks about "Auto Save" feature of Office 365, I just want to understand whether this Auto Save feature has any connection to the OneDrive Sync GPO "Coauthor and share in Office desktop apps".
We have disabled this OneDrive sync client GPO due to slowness of opening the documents from sync location, this Auto Save feature is greyed out by default. When we enabled this GPO, the Auto Save feature is enabled.
But, the weird thing is that after we disabled again the GPO, the Auto Save feature is disabled (not greyed out) by default and option to enabled in the individual documents.
Can someone faced this issue or really this GPO affect the Auto Save functionality. Need your experts advice here.
Thanks
Chandrasekaran C N
- Thank you f1demon for this work-around. This has been driving me batty for several days. I agree, AutoSave should just give users the ability to select the location initially, rather than having to move the file after it's already saved. I have been trying to get files already in subfolders in OneDrive to open and auto-save to their original locations on a new (to me, anyway) PC, and they were all going as new copies into the Documents root folder instead. Now, at least, I can create copies this way and move them as needed. I greatly appreciate your input to this thread.
I have the same problem. At the moment I have about 100 documents all in root of OneDrive. That is "bull**bleep**", sorry! :-(
- Just out of interest - when you saved any one of these 100 documents and clicked the Save To OneDrive option - where did you think they would be saved to given that it does not ask for a folder or default location?
Brian Reid I, like most sane people would expect it to save back to the Onedrive folder it was opened from, not the root of Onedrive.
- Am I reading that there is still no way to change where the autosave in Word365 saves to? It saves to my onedrive programs.exe folder. Why would it save there? I did not choose that even when first setting this up. I am trying to change the location to my onedrive document folder. This is also true for my phone, laptop, desktop and notebook. I assume other people were having it save to other folders (not of their choosing), but these are not all the same name, so there must be a way to change this.
I saw the question, Why don't you "save as" first. I have to admit that it is FASTER to click the autosave than it is to go to the save as and do all that. Autosave saves it immediately (after naming it, if you want to name it). It auto saves to the programs.exe folder, which I don't want, but I can go in and move it (from the drop down in word--where the document title is at the top of my screen) and select a new folder. It really would be simpler just to have it ask in the same place that I am titling the document the first time for the autosave.
What I don't understand is why I cannot change the autosave file location anywhere on the online onedrive. Since all of my tech is autosaving to the onedrive online programs.exe folder.
I did delete the online folder to see what would happen and it now gives me an error when i try to use autosave. So it seems I have to use their chosen folder or nothing. 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.
- What about saving the file in the location you want and them enable the Autosave?
jcgonzalezmartin Yes, this obviously works indeed. My request here is specifically to allow selecting a folder, for any new document which has not been saved yet, when clicking the AutoSave button.
- Why are you clicking AutoSave for a document that has not been saved yet. Just save it where you want it to go and as long as its OneDrive or SharePoint Online it will turn on AutoSave for you
- Also move it in your Onedrive from the root folder :)
But it would be nice to have the option to browse since it does have this functionality to choose to save it to onedrive when autosave is turned on anyway
David_RobbinsPaul_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.
