How do I stop Word saving to OneDrive?

Not fussed about using OneDrive? Or rather just prefer that your Word files don’t get saved to it by default? Well, here’s how to stop Word from saving to OneDrive by default.

How to stop Word saving to OneDrive

Time needed: 2 minutes

This is how to stop recent versions of Word (we’ve tested this back to Word 2016) on the PC defaulting to OneDrive every time you hit the Save button.

  1. Open Word’s settings

    Open Word, and create a new document. Click on the File menu in the top left-hand corner and then click on Options in the bottom-left corner of the window.

  2. Choose Save To Computer

    Click Save from the sidebar on the left-hand side of the window that appears. Then, in the right-hand pane, tick the option that says “Save to Computer by default”.

  3. Choose a new destination folder

    You now need to tell Word which folder you’d like to save documents in by default. Hit the Browse button next to “Default local file location” and navigate to the folder that you wish to use. I’ve chosen a folder in my Dropbox, which I find far more reliable and flexible as a cloud service than OneDrive. Your screen should look something like this now:
    How do I stop Word saving to OneDrive?

  4. Finish and test

    Now click OK at the bottom of the screen and test whether it’s working by typing a few random words and hitting Save. Hopefully, it should default to your new location.

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Barry Collins

Barry has 20 years of experience working on national newspapers, websites and magazines. He was editor of PC Pro and is co-editor and co-owner of BigTechQuestion.com. He has published a number of articles on TechFinitive covering data, innovation and cybersecurity.

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