Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward

https://www.ghacks.net/2025/08/27/your-word-documents-will-be-saved-to-the-cloud-automatically-on-windows-going-forward/

by speckx • 11 months ago

310 281 11 months ago

ghacks.net

nickslaughter02• 11 months ago

In other news, government documents from around the world uploaded to a US operated cloud.

bhawks• 11 months ago

| If you mind that Word documents are stored in the cloud by default, you need to modify the default setting.

Now that would require the competent configuration of the software by the government and proper usage by the individual. So leak guaranteed.

guappa• 11 months ago

The competent OS uses sane defaults.

JumpCrisscross• 11 months ago

government documents from around the world uploaded to a US operated cloud

“Word customers who do not want their documents to be saved to the cloud by default need to become active to change the default save location.”

croes• 11 months ago

And hope that the next update doesn’t reverse the settings

nubinetwork• 11 months ago

We recently started rolling out 11 at work, and we have all sorts of group policy hacks to disable stuff... one thing I noticed is that despite copilot being disabled, the button still appears at the top of every office app. I'll have to check on the weekend, but I wouldn't be surprised if we hard enable this option as we have our own OneDrive instance to replace our terabytes of network shares.

Semaphor• 11 months ago

FWIW, I don’t have any copilot buttons anywhere (checked Excel, Teams, Outlook), on 24H2.

john_the_writer• 11 months ago

Got to figure out how to block the url in the router.

gregoryl4• 11 months ago

Just switch to Linux. It's very accessible for anyone who might have an account on here.

charcircuit• 11 months ago

This is already how alternatives like google docs work, being cloud first so I think it makes sense for Microsoft to follow as its natural to want to be able to read, modify, and share documents from various computers.

rpdillon3• 11 months ago

This is a naive take because it ignores the presence of the third-party doctrine. The moment any file is uploaded to the cloud, you lose an expectation of privacy. When we decided to put everything in the cloud, I think most people sort of forgot about this, but it doesn't make it not relevant.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

N-Krause4• 11 months ago

The next reason, following hundreds of others, to start using Linux for the Desktop. If my non technical SO can do it, you can do it as well.

pmontra• 11 months ago

Hopefully, but most likely a lot a people will shrug or won't notice. Others will start using Libre Office and discover that it's more than enough for their very basic tasks.

rpdillon3• 11 months ago

Yep, I'm constantly astonished by adults that insist that Linux is too hard to use on the desktop. My entire family has been using it for years. I raise my kids on it. Works great.

reddalo2• 11 months ago

My family has also been using it for years, but I'm the one who always had to install, update, fix problems, etc.

I think the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of Linux is not using Linux itself, it's installing it on a computer. 99% of people don't know how to format a USB device, or how to enter the BIOS.

Numerlor• 11 months ago

The least technical people will be fine because they only use their 4 programs where a Chromebook would probably be enough.

Between those and the people that can navigate everything on Linux, there'll be mildly technical people. Those may explore things that are out of the ordinary but will be unable or unwilling to fix issues that could arise from that

baq3• 11 months ago

It's a shorthand for 'it's hard to get everything 100% working after a fresh install and it's hard to have it not break when it updates'. If you manage to get from the out-of-the-box 90% working condition and don't touch too many things afterwards, it works great indeed; hence the recommendations of starting out with legacy hardware so you're closer to 100% than 90% initially.

linhns• 11 months ago

Yep. It’s 2025 now and Linux on desktop has evolved far from the much maligned days. Gnome should be more than enough for casual purposes.

akimbostrawman3• 11 months ago

They just use it as an excuse because change takes effort and might show that there previously believes where wrong.

farmin2• 11 months ago

Yes I moved away from Windows to MacOS but couldnt get used to the UI and they have now sprinkled bad AI tools throughout. I use KUbuntu now which feels a bit like Windows 10 and really is all I need. But what I really want on my Thinkpad with KUbuntu is the perfect open/close screen management like the Macbook has and changing from second monitor to no second monitor often causes issues and doesnt just work argh.. Maybe one of these linux first laptops will fill the void.

legacynl• 11 months ago

Problems with sleep/suspend modes is a relatively common in Linux. There's some good information with tricks and workarounds on

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop and https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_an... w

chistev• 11 months ago

What reasons did your non technical SO have for switching?

N-Krause4• 11 months ago

I am using Linux personally for the last 5 years or so. When she bought a new laptop I told her that she wouldn't need windows for her use case and the (free) Linux would be more than adequate. She is mostly using it for education (university), browsing internet. Just casual stuff.

She then proceeded to install and test the programs she needed and everything worked basically out of the box, so now she continued to use it because it doesn't matter to her what she uses, as long as she can use it.

(She is using Fedora on a Framework laptop)

6ak74rfy• 11 months ago

What distribution would you recommend for non technical people?

I am thinking Fedora's atomic desktop for family. Any other suggestions?

yogorenapan• 11 months ago

Regular Fedora will probably be easier. Most docs are for the regular version. It's not worth the effort figuring out what went wrong with atomic

trelane11• 11 months ago

I've heard good things about Pop!OS working well out of the box on Windows hardware.

ommz• 11 months ago

Seems like Microsoft's Modus operandi the last few years has been: Make anti-consumer move -> get backlash -> repackage same egregiousness while stalling & deflecting -> repeat cycle

Steamrolling their users then getting rewarded with their stock going stratospheric. Excellent!

jgalt2122• 11 months ago

That's pretty much it. If MSFT stock was punished for such actions, they would stop today.

mrweasel• 11 months ago

Steamrolling their users then getting rewarded with their stock going stratospheric

Welcome to the world of modern capitalism. I'm seriously starting to question if a company can survive on the stock market by creating a solid product and caring about the users of that product.

kotaKat• 11 months ago

I just wish they’d wine and dine me after getting fucked so much.

dijit2• 11 months ago

Be a CFO at a major company, Microsoft will wine and dine you while they fuck all your staff.

ur-whale• 11 months ago

Looks like the list of reasons to avoid window like the plague is growing longer every day.

vehemenz• 11 months ago

Office 365 is a macOS and web-based application too. The implications of cloud-based document storage as the default is greater than just another bullet point in Windows' decline. This will affect anyone, anywhere Office 365 is used.

JanneVee• 11 months ago

I'm old as dirt but I recall one of the arguments for TPM was shoved down our throats was the ability to tie documents to machines and organizations. Something something... industrial espionage. Now we know that is a lie. They just wanted to fill landfills with old working computers.

Borg3• 11 months ago

Nah.. Ill grab any old HW between 2005-2015 they throw up :) Who say I need to run newest windows on them, eh? :)

sombragris• 11 months ago

I wonder what would lawyers and doctors writing very sensitive, liability-ridden info would have to say about this move.

IAmBroom2• 11 months ago

They wouldn't say a damn thing. It's IT, not law/billing nor medicine/insurance.

Bright as some of them are, it's not their silo.

account42• 11 months ago

That's not how liability works.

deepsquirrelnet• 11 months ago

Or how about the DoD?[1]

[1]https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-china-defense-d...

Microsoft Failed to Disclose Key Details About Use of China-Based Engineers in U.S. Defense Work, Record Shows

AnimalMuppet• 11 months ago

Not just them. Any business that has things that are considered "company confidential" (isn't that all of them?) should be concerned.

aerostable_slug• 11 months ago

Or those working on export controlled content. ITAR is everywhere these days, and it would be un-fun to experience a deemed export of technical data because an engineer didn't watch where their document went and the data center has non-US-persons working in it.

Havoc3• 11 months ago

Guessing it'll be enabled for enterprise copies / machines connected to AD

Silhouette2• 11 months ago

If this report is accurate and the change is made quietly and automatically as it predicts then how does this not end up with the mother of all lawsuits? We have several clients in sensitive industries and contractually it is very clear that we must not upload data for those projects anywhere. Surely many others do as well. Anyone working in industries like healthcare or security could get in a lot of trouble for uploading data even once.

staticman2• 11 months ago

If you are working in Healthcare or security wouldn't Onedrive be disabled and therefore it can't autosave to the cloud?

Silhouette2• 11 months ago

Within a dedicated organisation you probably would disable it. If you're a supplier working with multiple clients then each might have their own policies on confidentiality and data sharing. Some of them might want you to manage information using an account they provide on a cloud system they use. Others might completely prohibit external transfers. A third category are OK with using online systems in principle but for legal or regulatory reasons they need to make sure that the data doesn't leave a certain geographic area so you can only use systems that provide that guarantee.

A reasonable policy for dealing with this variety is to default to not transferring anything you're working on outside the relevant parts of your organisation - including use of cloud services - and then enable specifics on a per-client basis according to need. It's like the principle of least privilege. But if you operate that way then any software that quietly starts sharing things without explicit permission is a big problem.

And if this change will affect home users who don't have professionally managed systems as well then the same moral hazard applies. I don't think it's OK to push people into sharing their personal data online without understanding what they're doing and the potential consequences.

hulitu5• 11 months ago

No. IT is an external company those days.

postdoc74• 11 months ago

I don't know what's new on this. For the last two years all Office apps I own have insisted on saving to OneDrive first. I have always had to explicitly click on the path and select another folder. Every. Single. Time.

balder1991• 11 months ago

And on Mac things like TextEdit and Apple’s own office tools save them on iCloud by default.

IAmBroom2• 11 months ago

You can turn that off in Settings.

For now.

jgalt2122• 11 months ago

More training data for MS, and more useless intel for the NSA.

127• 11 months ago

Just recently moved onto Linux. Most likely not coming back when these kind of things just keep happening. I'm really surprised how well everything works. 120Hz HDR 4k Nvidia no issues on Wayland. Kubuntu 25.04/Plasma 6.3 is very nice. EasyEffects/PipeWire makes audio better compared to Windows. Steam/Proton/Wine works very well for games outside ones that have kernel level rootkits. Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth I can't think of anything that's worse than Windows while many things are better.

bdhcuidbebe3• 11 months ago

Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth

This is a gotcha. The issue is probably that your user dont have the permissions to interact with udev devices.

See https://codeberg.org/fabiscafe/game-devices-udev

gregoryl4• 11 months ago

Ditto; ~20 years of dotnet dev, 1000+ games on steam. Couldn't be more baked into the ecosystem. Its just the work laptop left with windows now, and the team is working to support a non-windows dev env.

hkon• 11 months ago

Same

ActionHank2• 11 months ago

This was me a few years back.

My wife switched this year after only ever using Windows and pure dotnet dev.

The first thing she said was "how is it so fast"

fzeroracer3• 11 months ago

I moved over to Linux about a year or so ago when Microsoft announced they were going to start pushing their AI shit on every Windows system. I created a small partition intending to just give it a shot but ended up never moving back since 99.9% of everything I tried just works. It's really quite amazing how far Linux has come in the past decade alone and right now the only reason I keep Windows on my work machine is because there's still specific dev pipelines I can only do on Windows.

jmclnx• 11 months ago

And one has to wonder, will M/S used these cloud documents for their AI push ? Even if the Word Docs are encrypted, I fully believe Microsoft can read the text in those documents.

People should realize everything you do in Excel and Word is being spied on by Microsoft, this cloud push is making that process easier and faster for M/S.

At the very least, go to Libreoffice. But better yet, as you just did, people need to abandon Microsoft and Apple for Linux or a BSD.

input_sh• 11 months ago

It's really quite amazing how far Linux has come in the past decade alone

There's no meaningful difference in the desktop Linux ecosystem right now and a decade ago, you're just more open to it as the alternative got worse.

RankingMember• 11 months ago

Just out of curiosity, what distro did you go with? I last gave Linux desktop a try about a decade ago (Ubuntu IIRC) and found it still not quite there, but I'm willing to give it another shot so I'd be curious what you had success with.

leptons3• 11 months ago

Same here. Work requires I use Windows or Mac, but I've switched most of my home systems over to Mint Linux. The final nail in the coffin for Microsoft for me was when I upgraded my CPU in my desktop, the MS Office liscense I paid for stopped working and they wanted me to pay another few hundred dollars for another liscence. I mainly only used Office for Outlook as I have 30 years of emails in Outlook, but I switched over to Firebird on Linux and have not looked back. The AI stuff going on with Windows is definitely a big part of me wanting to switch too. I do not want what Microsoft is selling anymore.

rkagerer• 11 months ago

Anyone successfully running Solidworks on Linux these days? That's one of the reasons holding me back. Might need to get an extra GPU and passthrough to a Win VM?

reddalo2• 11 months ago

I work on a mac, but I have Linux at home.

I've started using LibreOffice at home and I'm surprised at how snappier it is compared to Word. Exported PDFs are even lighter that the ones Word do.

underlipton3• 11 months ago

Backup important docs to rtf/txt. I've had Libre/OpenOffice docs blank/all text replaced with hashtags on me suddenly. AFAICT, it's an autosave bug that's never going to be fixed (though I'm not technical enough to know for sure). Personally, I would never use those programs for anything important.

anonzzzies• 11 months ago

Ha! I recently thought I would try it again as the cloud & office are getting really too annoying. Libreoffice is snappier than google docs/sheets in the browser, which I say like this is special, but these days with Electron it really is. And it's on my own system. I'm staying here... It's fast & works well for work and private use.

whalesalad• 11 months ago

Check out onlyoffice as well. I use onlyoffice + libreoffice depending on the workload. I find libreoffice to have a better spreadsheet tool but prefer editing/commenting on documents in onlyoffice and it has a more modern aesthetic.

Beijinger2• 11 months ago

Softmaker (Freeoffice) is much snappier. But I stopped using (buying!) it, after they refused to support LanguageTool.

crinkly5• 11 months ago

Only thing that keeps me off Linux is Lightroom and Photoshop. Nothing even remotely comparable. So it's Mac for me, but I get you.

doublerabbit2• 11 months ago

Use moonlight and stream it locally.

I use FreeBSD for my daily driver. I now stream games/Windows apps from a dedicated windows VM. It's impressive technology.

phkahler2• 11 months ago

> Only thing that keeps me off Linux is Lightroom and Photoshop.

Try Darktable or Ansel instead of Lightroom. I'm not gonna tell you Gimp is a good photoshop replacement though ;-)

bpye3• 11 months ago

Running them in a Windows VM with an attached GPU works great, I suspect you could use something like Looking Glass [0] as well - though I’d be nervous about colour profiles.

[0] https://looking-glass.io/

craftkiller2• 11 months ago

Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth

FWIW I use a DualSense controller connected to my Linux computers all the time without issue and without having to do anything special. In fact, Sony is the author of the DualSense driver on Linux[0]. Do you connect anything else over bluetooth? I'm wondering if your bluetooth setup might just be broken in general rather than specifically for DualSense controllers.

[0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Sony-HID-PlayStation-PS5

trelane11• 11 months ago

Their point was that the dongle's proprietary firmware was buggy. The controllers just triggered the problem.

naruhodo• 11 months ago

And honestly, not supporting kernel level rootkits is a feature, not a bug.

anal_reactor2• 11 months ago

First I switched to Linux Mint. Turns out anno 2025 most distros are still made with legacy ThinkPads in mind. Then I installed Fedora KDE. It gives an impression of working. Make no mistake - I have weird display glitches, shit crashes all the time, stuff randomly refuses to work, some devices I have require ridiculous workarounds, basic tasks require cryptic terminal commands, software updates introduce awkward regressions, but I think we've truly reached the milestone where a dedicated person can run Linux as their main desktop system. I suppose in about 30 years we'll have a Linux distribution that can be used on desktop without any IT knowledge.

Of course technically speaking I shouldn't complain because I have provided nothing of value to the Linux ecosystem (how the fuck do I even start, even if I wanted to?), but still, the point stands.

pessimizer• 11 months ago

we've truly reached the milestone where a dedicated person can run Linux as their main desktop system.

You're 20 years too late for this.

The reason why Linux doesn't run well on the latest greatest hardware (and never has) is because the vendors of that hardware range from indifferent to actively hostile to Linux, and to make the system work people have to fight. Buy a legacy thinkpad, or something you've researched, and you'll have fewer problems than with Windows or Macs (which are tied to even more specific hardware and obsoleted by company whim.)

Of course, if you're on the bleeding edge of technology, everyone is using Linux (whether directly or in VMs and containers), so when I say the latest greatest, I mean the latest greatest consumer and business user stuff.

I've never understood comments like this. It's like you're looking at a pool full of people who have been swimming for years and telling you the pool is nice, and saying: "I guess it's finally ready for the real experts now."

Also, if you love vendors so much, you can have one. Buy your Linux computer from somebody who sells Linux computers, knows any problems you'll run into on that specially-selected hardware, and call them when you have a problem, just like you would do for the others.

Of course technically speaking I shouldn't complain because I have provided nothing of value to the Linux ecosystem

This is the worst point by far. You can complain about anything that is broken, you just can't expect anyone to care (because you haven't obligated anyone to.) The problem isn't complaining, it's complaining badly. Get a vendor, whine to them.

dizlexic• 11 months ago

Windows has been slipping for decades now. Welcome to the penguin!

aquova• 11 months ago

Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth

I've had this issue as well on KDE Plasma. I'm convinced it's some sort of bug within Plasma itself. If I use bluetoothctl to pair the controller, it works fine, might be worth giving that a try if you haven't.

halz• 11 months ago

On a whim, there is a nuanced situation with some Realtek (RTL8671B) bluetooth firmware on Linux that is 'solved' by downgrading firmware version. This random gist has a nice thread https://gist.github.com/peteristhegreat/b48da772167f86f43dec... ..and this fellow Nix wizard has the downgrade expressed in a nix config: https://github.com/Arroquw/nixos-config/commit/9d90d7d659e74...

I too was experiencing odd/erratic pairing issues with DualSense controllers and this RTL8671B based dongle, and using the older firmware entirely fixed it. Now four controllers can be connected simultaneously without issue.

tombert6• 11 months ago

I eventually did get it working, but man you are luckier than I getting Nvidia to have "no issues". I had to waste an entire weekend getting an Nvidia card working [1].

I love Linux and specifically NixOS but my experience with good audio and non-AMD drivers has been pretty so-so.

[1] https://blog.tombert.com/posts/2025-03-09-egpu/ Not trying to self-plug, just documented my headache.

kevin_thibedeau2• 11 months ago

That situation is entirely of Nvidia's making.

tiahura• 11 months ago

All of that compute can’t compensate for the fact that starlibreopenoffice is atrocious. Big corps have been looking for ways to migrate for decades but fail because it’s so abysmal.

0xffff23• 11 months ago

Meanwhile, I just tried 3 different flavors of Fedora last week and could not even get to the point where I could log in reliably. Never mind getting the handful of Windows-only apps I still rely on to work. I'm despairing that I may have to let Windows update itself to Win11 while I wait for my next hardware upgrade cycle to roll around so I can try to pick more compatible hardware.

If anyone has any recommendations for how to pick desktop components that will "just work" with Linux I'd love to hear them.

neobrain2• 11 months ago

If anyone has any recommendations for how to pick hardware that will "just work" with Linux I'd love to hear them.

Some vendors sell hardware with Linux preinstalled or specifically tested (besides the obvious ones like System76/Framework/Tuxedo, Dell provides an XPS flavor that comes with Ubuntu). You don't need to actually use the preinstalled distro, but buying such models ensures baseline support is solid and it sends a signal to vendors to continue ensuring so.

Then there's Apple's M1/M2 lineup, which provides the smoothest Linux experience you can have today (specific hardware features are not supported yet, the rest works extremely well!).

Other than that, the Arch wiki is typically a good resource that lists quirks of individual devices with Linux.

mhitza2• 11 months ago

I wonder what issues you've seen (error messages), and what hardware you're using. Fedora has been my goto distribution for more than 15 years. And aside from Nvidia, and Gnome, causing me trouble, it worked great[1]. Though I always install the Xfce spin.

For your Windows applications you can try to use winapps (windows vm behind the scenes, but tucked away from view) https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps

[1] never update to the latest Fedora version, at least until a couple of months after release. If you don't want to be a beta tester. Yes sometimes they don't a good job with SELinux policies and you'll be dealing with annoying popup notifications from time to time. And yes, if you're using full disk encryption (via LUKS) you really want to enable some flags which Cloudflare engineering contributed back (but are not the defaults), otherwise stuttery desktop behaviour is possible.

EasyMark2• 11 months ago

Your best bet is to get a brand that is well known to run Linux if you want it bad enough to get a new laptop. Dell business line, lenovo thinkpad, framework, system76 are all good platforms. If it's not working on your old laptop it's probably only one or two drivers, and you should probably try running with debian, endeavour, ubuntu and a few flavors that might have the driver you need working.

rossant• 11 months ago

Love Linux. Finally moved over it more than 10y ago and never looked back.

Still a few minor issues though. Sleep doesn't work well with Ubuntu on a desktop PC with an Nvidia card. It frequently wakes up immediately, or the screen remains black upon wake up. And sometimes it just works. Same problem on different PCs.

Just a minor annoyance though. I love Linux. On a recent computer everything is so fast and snappy compared to Windows or even macOS.

yencabulator2• 11 months ago

Don't blame Nvidia's bad behavior on Linux.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/linus...

laserDinosaur• 11 months ago

Do you have a Gigabyte motherboard (perhaps a B550) by chance?

EasyMark2• 11 months ago

Yeah I get tired of them trying to suck every bit of data and work that you do into the cloud so they can hoodwink you later with licensing fees and to train their AI. The last straw for me was their "we want to constantly snap shot your screen and index, oh and -wink- it's for your own good, so we'll enable it automatically for you!" I was done at that point and deleted it off my last PC with windows and put Ubuntu on it. I have Mac version of Office that's good enough for now.

akimbostrawman3• 11 months ago

well for games outside ones that have kernel level rootkits

I wish people would stop bringing this up which has not been true for years. Around 40-50% of kernel level anti cheats work and are supported (in user space).

https://areweanticheatyet.com/

terminalshort• 11 months ago

My computer broke while I was traveling a few years ago, so I bought a cheap Windows laptop at Walmart. It took me an hour to figure out get that thing up and running without setting up a Microsoft account online. I even had to change a freaking BIOS setting! I bet you can't even do it at all now.

gregoryl4• 11 months ago

You still can; its a pain in the ass tho. They keep changing it, I suspect in the hope that out of date tutorials will deter less technical users.

bdhcuidbebe3• 11 months ago

Impressive. Now corporations and governments have one more reason to abandon ship.

ryankrage77• 11 months ago

Microsoft's accouncement: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insider...

Word has defaulted to saving in OneDrive (if you turn on autosave and you're signed into an MS account) for years now, I think since the Office 2016 > Office 365 update. The only real change I see is that the document will now be given a name with the date instead of just 'Document 1'. Maybe it's a little more aggressive about turning on autosave for you? The autorecover location is still in appdata.

TiredOfLife• 11 months ago

And you can change default save location in settings. The main change is that clicking new now automatically saves.

In my 10 years using this website daily i am yet to see a microsoft related thread and comments that is not fud, misinformation or straight lies

skywhopper• 11 months ago

Microsoft does it to themselves by making poor announcements and making Windows more and more opaque about simple things like “where is this file”?

akimbostrawman3• 11 months ago

That you can disable it does not make any of the claims of default cloud upload FUD but a fact.

pjmlp3• 11 months ago

While I am not fan of this, remember that most people that dislike Microsoft are using Google Office cloud only products.

bdhcuidbebe3• 11 months ago

Who cares?

When did Google offer an non-cloud installable app and changed it to upload to the cloud?

pjmlp3• 11 months ago

Because usually everyone that throws stones forgets about their own roofs.

I bet all those cool SV people "we're better than Microsoft" aren't using Libre Office on a GNU/Linux system.

Maybe it is time for some donations?

lanfeust6• 11 months ago

Source: pulled out of thin air

pjmlp3• 11 months ago

To each its own.

kstrauser3• 11 months ago

We have an enterprise contact with Google with data privacy terms and controls on what happens with that data. I mean, Google will even sign a HIPAA BAA with you if you ask them to.

We don’t have one for the 3 people in the company to need to use Word on occasion.

crinkly5• 11 months ago

Glad I don't have to use Word any more or Windows. Everything is in TeXShop+LaTeX for me now. Just files on the disk as it should be.

rahen• 11 months ago

I use Emacs (org-mode with TeX and Beamer exports) for almost everything, it's my office suite among other things. The only time I still need LibreOffice is for diagrams and charts, and even that is slowly being replaced by Mermaid.

https://ridaayed.com/posts/create-diagrams-in-emacs-org-mode...

executiverange• 11 months ago

Seconded Emacs. I use it for almost everything. I started using it for text editing and it slowly crept into basic web browsing, RSS reader, word processing (with org-mode and Markdown), presentation (through Pandoc/Beamer) and Elisp/C programming. It's gotten to the point where the only four programs I use daily on my Mac are LibreWolf, FreeTube, Logic Pro and Emacs.

Seriously if I could use Logic Pro inside Emacs I would.

hliyan2• 11 months ago

Until they decide to default sync all files on disk to the cloud.

crinkly5• 11 months ago

That hasn't happened on Mac at least. If it does I will go to Linux.

yodon• 11 months ago

More than anything, Microsoft is incompetent at messaging and communications.

This is a feature that has been among the most loved aspects of its main competitor for more than a decade.

Somehow, Microsoft managed to make the same feature sound and feel and be creepy.

Xelbair2• 11 months ago

It's even simpler.

People who wanted that kind of treatment and walled garden already moved to apple's ecosystem, and people who do not want this stayed with windows.

Now more and more of my non-technical friends are moving towards linux because microsoft is pushing them away.

8fingerlouie• 11 months ago

I think the main competitor for Microsoft Office is Google, which indeed defaults to saving documents in the cloud.

Apple, as far as i know, still gives you a choice.

ubermonkey4• 11 months ago

I've no idea what you mean by "walled garden" w/r/t MacOS, but I understand it's an article of faith on HN.

Again, for the Nth time, you can run any software you like on a Mac. You can do anything you want. App store? Of course. Direct vendor download? You bet. Build from source? No problem.

Further, this line is out of place here because Microsoft is FAR more invasive about pushing cloud-first storage than Apple has ever been. No app on my Mac default to saving to iCloud. NONE.

throw0101a2• 11 months ago

People who wanted that kind of treatment and walled garden already moved to apple's ecosystem, and people who do not want this stayed with windows.

Probably mostly applicable to people who know about "ecosystems", rather than normies who view computers mostly as another type of hammer (a tool).

stuaxo• 11 months ago

Their competitor is cloud native, so where else would it be stored?

This is still a local app, so it doesn't feel like a natural default.

mc32• 11 months ago

It should be the default for corp accounts. But even home users would benefit form seamless document retrieval (recovery).

Corp users’s biggest IT headache is lost Word or Excel files.

Zambyte• 11 months ago

Web applications (even those with interactive editing!) can store all data locally instead of remotely if desired. See Excalidraw for a nice example.

clejack• 11 months ago

While incompetence might be an issue, I think the greater problem is that Microsoft is rolling back control and generally sucks at UX.

Why does this app that's been working just fine as desktop software need to save anything to the cloud by default? It's conceptually odd.

I've used Google docs from the beginning, but I actively choose what docs I want on that platform.

All MS had to do was add "save to cloud" as an additional save option along with "save" and "save as" (maybe renamed as "save to desktop") then auto save could activate where your last save location was. This would be good design.

fragmede• 11 months ago

Who's incompetence? When half their users need to ask "what's a cloud", that option is too complicated. What's sensible and reasonable and logical to us, isn't to the rest of the world.

rekabis2• 11 months ago

Microsoft is rolling back control

Agreed. Functionality like this should be presented as a choice in an OOBE welcoming screen right after installation. And it should be _a choice,_ something that can be reversed at a later date if the decision was wrong.

TechSquidTV• 11 months ago

Microsoft could announce that they've made kittens live forever and people would complain.

kstrauser3• 11 months ago

Microsoft: We’ve opted all users not on the Ultimate edition into the mandatory Kitten Soul Cage.

Fans: You people will complain about everything!

olddustytrail2• 11 months ago

There must be a name for this fallacy. You know where it goes:

Person/Company does crappy thing

People complain

Fanboy says "Person/Company could do amazing thing and people would still complain"

... when it's very obvious that company/person didn't do anything good.

I've seen it so many times there must be a name for it. Anyone know what it is?

layer83• 11 months ago

I don’t think kittens living forever would work out well, if you think about it.

tsukikage2• 11 months ago

OneDrive has to manage synchronising the cloud with multiple, potentially independently updated, local copies. This is a much harder problem than anything Google have tried to tackle, with more ways for things to go wrong compared to "no internet connectivity? No documents for you!"

This has the effect that (to a first approximation) everyone knows someone with a horrific OneDrive data loss story, no-one particularly trusts OneDrive with anything actually important, and so no-one wants to be forced to use it for everything.

msh• 11 months ago

Google drive provides the exact same sync functionality.

avarun• 11 months ago

CRDTs have existed for decades and Google uses them along with an offline feature. This is not nearly as hard as you’re making it sound.

imtringued• 11 months ago

That sounds like an extreme amount of incompetence to me.

I understand that you run into this problem with third party software like Dropbox, because they aren't natively integrated with the OS and therefore need to do some unreliable file tagging to support basic operations like renaming, moving or copying files, but Microsoft controls the entire OS.

They can scan the filesystem journal for file system operations. They can build custom OneDrive specific features into their file explorer. They have an office suite that can directly integrate with OneDrive.

Yet they chose to not do that and instead decided that they really ought to collect all your data for training AI instead.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 11 months ago

Somehow, Microsoft managed to make the same feature sound and feel and be creepy.

The company they're imitating (poorly, as always) is one I've found so creepy that I actively go out of my way to distance myself from. For at least the last decade at this point. If Microsoft is being creepy too, this just means they'e successfully imitated the competition... for once.

nerdjon• 11 months ago

If I am reading this right I assume this is only if you have onedrive enabled?

If that is the case, I think it makes some sense if you are already setup to use that to default to saving there since it makes it easier to find your files on other devices and they be safe. Theoretically if you have it setup you already agree to the risks of storing data in the cloud.

however... The real problem to me is that onedrive is enabled by default and that they are now requiring you to login with a microsoft account to use Windows. If both of those were not the case this makes complete sense.

But until they stop enabling one drive by default and making it a pain in the ass to disable this is bad.

Havoc3• 11 months ago

One drive is now basically universally active even if not used. See also forcing logging into an online account during windows installation...

SunlightEdge2• 11 months ago

dumb question - but how best to edit/update word files on linux/ubuntu?

The only issue with linux I am wondering about is sharing my CV where most companies need a word file.

For dev work/play time - 100% linux

worble• 11 months ago

Libreoffice has always just worked for me, but I don't do anything special with word.

I've also heard that OnlyOffice is very good and has better compatibility with Microsoft's formats, but I've never personally used it.

SunlightEdge2• 11 months ago

Ok! I can just use Google docs! it downloads automatically as a word file and it looks in word pretty much exactly how it looks in Google docs

Personal Office is a total waste of money

jlarocco• 11 months ago

The only issue with linux I am wondering about is sharing my CV where most companies need a word file.

Maybe it's regional, but I've never been asked for a Word file resume.

I've never had somebody turn down a PDF. And all of the "Upload you resume" online applications I've seen also support PDF. A lot of them lately will even correctly parse out the info and auto-fill forms with it, but some of them mangle it.

AuthAuth• 11 months ago

For CV I use libreoffice and save it as a PDF/a. If it needs to be editable for some reason you can use docx or odt(odt might scare the average office worker so stick with docx).

throw0101a2• 11 months ago

I think that for "normies", the risk of losing data because of a dead / stolen device (because in all probably they don't have / do backups) is higher than the risk of loss privacy or other problems that HN "techies" may have with this.

kstrauser3• 11 months ago

Yes, but the risk may be far greater for one than the other.

It’d be a bummer if my cousin lost the term paper he was writing. It would be a Truly Bad Day if a coworker uploaded a sensitive document to an unauthorized (or unexpected!) cloud service and it got compromised and the sensitive data used against us.

The former would be bad for my cousin. The latter would involve lawsuits and smitings. The probability is lower, but the risk is much, much higher.

hliyan2• 11 months ago

What next? Even my text files will be default synced to the cloud, and nothing will be beyond the prying eyes of advertisers, governments and data-hungry LLMs?

To be fair, I already sync some of my text files to the cloud, but I choose which ones I sync to which services. This seems to take away our agency.

b3ing• 11 months ago

They will secretly use your docs to train their models on it, say it was a mistake, pay their $4million dollar fine in 2040 for doing that and laugh the whole time.

imglorp• 11 months ago

To say nothing about censorship and alerting in your private documents. Discussing sensitive biological matters, or unpopular political thoughts? Not a good idea when living in an authoritarian state.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/07/26/censors...

kevin_thibedeau2• 11 months ago

And they'll host them on an foreign server farm.

paulnpace• 11 months ago

I'm sure there's nothing secret about it as it's probably published in the agreement you acknowledged reading before "agreeing".

throw7• 11 months ago

"Furthermore, any new document will be named with the date instead of a traditional name by default."

I can't parse this? They're going to append the date to the filename you give? Is it updated in real time as you edit the document? Or you get multiple files with multiple dates?

BLKNSLVR• 11 months ago

I dislike this, rationally or not.

On my work laptop I've had to move my working folder out of "My Documents" so that going into subfolders doesn't stop and think for ten seconds each while it does... something... with OneDrive.

I just want to get to the files real quick, I don't want to calculate '42' at every fucking folder-open event.

I'm not a very nostalgic motherfucker, so I have no desire to relive computing from the early 90s.

(this may be specific to enforced settings at my workplace, but it feels like this is the same kinda thing)

Linux at home for the last five-odd years and almost daily I'm reminded how good a decision that was.

Verdex• 11 months ago

I honestly did not think I was ever going to be coming back to Linux. But here we are. So far I've migrated a laptop and gaming machine to fedora.

The gaming machine operates significantly better on fedora than it ever did on windows.

I'm on the fence for what to do with my other two machines, but it feels like there's weekly news pushing me away from continuing with windows.

chiffre01• 11 months ago

Shooting for that 7 percent Linux desktop market share!

NoSalt• 11 months ago

"There is no cloud ... only someone else's computer."

Truer words have never been spoken. In my personal life, I hate the cloud and will never use any cloud service of any kind.

moi2388• 11 months ago

We develop exclusively on the Microsoft stack.

We’re already starting to move over to Linux for all our machines.

nomilk• 11 months ago

Data harvesting for LLM training, with no benefit to the user but huge privacy reduction.

nashashmi2• 11 months ago

I love onedrive and have been a long time user since it was called skydrive. I also love the sharepoint features in onedrive.

But I stopped auto saving by default. I find that simply navigating a document and making markups ends up saving the document when all i wanted to was view it and not save it

I use the modified date filter extensively to figure out what is most relevant and what is not. With autosave, the date modified keeps changing. And going online and restoring the file to an earlier version changes DM to now. Meaning that information is either permanently lost or I have to hack it and change it manually.

animitronix2• 11 months ago

Dude, fuck product managers and their incentives

timbit42• 11 months ago

They'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

RobRivera• 11 months ago

Great! No more expectation of privacy and an entitlement to my computation data.

tombert6• 11 months ago

I grew pretty frustrated with WYSIWYG word processors about a decade ago, and moved to a Pandoc->LaTeX->PDF system for everything until about six months ago, when I finally learned Typst and use that for everything now. I just prefer Markdown (or Markdown-adjacent in the case of Typst) and I hate formatting sneaking in with invisible characters.

However, I realize that I'm weird, and I certainly don't blame most people for preferring the Word style of editing, since most people aren't nerdy software engineers.

While a part of me hopes this works as a push for people to use FOSS like LibreOffice, I'm not really holding my breath. I tried getting my parents to switch years ago after they were complaining about having to pay for a subscription to Office, and they were wholly unmoved and didn't like LibreOffice.

In fairness, LibreOffice didn't really do what my parents wanted; the equation editor for LibreOffice is decidedly harder to use than Microsoft's (even compared to the old Mathtype version), and the syntax for their spreadsheet stuff is different enough from Excel that it can lead to a fairly steep learning curve.

bayindirh2• 11 months ago

I don't think you're weird. I also have some tiers when it comes to typesetting.

Normal documents, 99.999% of the time, are written in Markdown, and stored like that or rendered to PDF, if required.

Everything serious go through LaTeX. I don't care about Typst, I'm happy with LaTeX syntax (I've written my Ph.D. with it, so I don't care if it fights you).

For some Office stuff I need to use office tools. LibreOffice if the other party accepts it or Microsoft Office for the picky documents and people.

A lot of personal calculations are done in Notion databases now, but I can wrangle Calc/Excel/Numbers enough to have them on file, if they are sensitive or need to be detached from Notion.

I'm an old school people. I don't migrate from tool to tool much.

tombert6• 11 months ago

I do use LaTeX sometimes; I don't like Typst's equation syntax as much so if I know I'm going to need more advanced or a lot of math formatting I still do Pandoc or even pure LaTeX sometimes.

I think that LaTeX is mostly fine enough but there are a few bits of bullshit that I find infuriating, e.g. having to remember to do `` for beginning quotes, which apparently I will never remember to do until I look at the rendered document. Also, the errors when compiling are pretty opaque and hard to parse; I've done it enough now to where I can usually figure it out but they're certainly pretty weird to a beginner.

I think we're both kind of weird :). Weird doesn't mean "bad", certainly, I'm just saying that I don't think it's reasonable to ask a random non-techy person to learn LaTeX or how to render with Pandoc. I did my entire undergrad work in Pandoc->LaTeX->PDF, and my entire masters work in Typst; I didn't finish my PhD but all the work I did for that was in vanilla LaTeX.

Importantly, though, I get to do it all using Neovim + tmux, so I can keep using my normal "IDE" at all times.

For spreadsheets, I usually just use Calc for anything that requires privacy, and Google Sheets for anything where privacy doesn't matter. They're both good enough for what I'm doing.

Eric_WVGG• 11 months ago

There’s an important generational component that’s getting missed here.

Most children (American children, at least) grew up on Chromebooks. That instills a certain expectation of how these things work — documents save themselves.

To switch to Microsoft Office means adding a cryptic, unnecessary-seeming extra step. I imagine it feels something like having a laptop that's designed to be shut down before closing.

You’ve all heard the stories about college CS students who have to be told what a folder is — and those are the kids who actually want to work with computers. Now step back to the next generation of lawyers and nurses and novelists and think about their lifetime experience.

Microsoft is just chasing the puck.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 11 months ago

You can have auto-save and automatic file naming without cloud storage

cosmic_cheese• 11 months ago

Yep. First party and well behaved third party Mac apps have been doing so since… jeez, 10.7 Lion (released in 2011) I think?

The way it works there is that documents are auto-saved to a non-volatile app-specific temp directory until they’re explicitly saved, at which point they’re moved to the specified location and continue to be auto-saved there. Anybody who uses TextEdit as a temp text stash is familiar with this with the hoard of unsaved documents that comes back even after a cold boot.

Microsoft is just motivated to push cloud storage onto usage.

kayodelycaon• 11 months ago

Microsoft removed auto-save of local files from the Mac version years ago.

saratogacx• 11 months ago

But how will you figure out what to name a file without pumping it through Copilot!?

9x39• 11 months ago

But why?

The Chromebook user makes a doc, closes the lid, and finds their doc on their phone or web later.

Why wouldn't the Windows user get the same UX?

The expectation is that your data's available anywhere. Even linux users are going to want backups of their own choice so it's available anywhere.

4b11b43• 11 months ago

If their reasoning is to support the Chromebook/Phone generation... that would be earnest.

But I'd have to assume it's a more "data driven" reason (ie capturing context of docs).

KeepFlying• 11 months ago

I'm almost positive that it's both and also a short-sighted "give the customer what they ask for" approach. You could easily achieve local auto save, or a clear "upload to the cloud" UX, or whatever else. But the user got confused about saving documents, sooooo cloud.

Then the data centralization is a nice plus that makes it impossible to go back on.

orev• 11 months ago

a laptop that's designed to be shut down

For the people who do shut it down, they do it by holding down the power button for 10+ seconds, because that’s how phones do it. On Windows at least, that causes a forced/crash shutdown.

progbits• 11 months ago

That's not Windows specific. It just forces power off on a firmware level, possibly even lower (the power management IC could have "hold to turn off" built in).

technothrasher2• 11 months ago

You’ve all heard the stories about college CS students who have to be told what a folder is

Back in the olden days of the early 90's when I was in school, I was working for the university's "Unix Group". Since I, being an undergrad, was the low man on the totem-pole there, I was always the one sent out to the various departments to do the support work on their workstations. The CS professors were, without question, the ones who knew the least about how to operate their machines. They mostly had no interest, as they were much more invested in CS theory than in practical use.

pavel_lishin• 11 months ago

Most children (American children, at least) grew up on Chromebooks. That instills a certain expectation of how these things work — documents save themselves.

I'd say iPads rather than Chromebooks, but the same applies - no concept of a file system, everything just living "in the cloud", the devices themselves being ultimately disposable - as long as you have iCloud set up, you can put your iPad in the shredder, and get all of your content back in under an hour.

ticulatedspline• 11 months ago

Definitely true, I think there is a divide where a GenX or Older millennial may say "why would I want you to save my stuff to the cloud" Z and beyond are likely more in the "why wouldn't I save to the cloud?" or at the extreme "you can do something other than save to the cloud?"

And while I think this is to some degree "keeping with the times" MS clearly has ulterior motives to do this, to lock users into an ecosystem, to dangle premium services, to charge for storage etc.

I suspect the HN crowd leans towards pessimistic/jaded views and that like MS is mostly doing this for the other reasons and not to conform to the norms of a population that doesn't really use MS word.

neuralRiot• 11 months ago

Maybe, but adding a setting for cloud/ local storage is not that complicated or even auto-save to local filesystem. Microsoft is just chasing the sales of “one drive” subscriptions.

joshstrange• 11 months ago

Yes, they will probably make more money from OneDrive subscriptions but it will be will help and make things easier for 99% of their users (if not higher).

We have to understand that being on this website alone puts us in a group that is not "normal" (from the content of the site, to the UI, to the rules, etc). I think almost everyone here would agree backups are important but what is the "normal" Windows person supposed to do for that if not OneDrive?

External/NAS is out of reach of most people (to manage if not to buy) and it's local and you really want a cloud backup. And while it would be great if we all had e2e encrypted backups where we had the only key, that is just not going to work for most people. They will lose the key, want features (like search) that don't work unless you pull all the data local, want ease of use moving between multiple devices, or <insert 1000 other reasons>.

Yes, yes, I know _you_ (collective) know how to do that, I get that you can set it up for the friends and family in your life, but most people will not learn or put up with the limitations even if someone else manages it for them.

Honestly, a lot of people (both young and old) have no concept of where they are saving their files, I think saving to the cloud by default is the right call. I wouldn't save a document locally unless I knew one of my many backups would get it safely to the cloud in short order if not immediately. If only to cut down on support calls for myself I think this is a welcome change.

All that's changing here is the default, you can still save locally if you want. It's just another layer of training wheels on technology. As much as that chafes people on this website, myself included often, I think it's 100% the right move. The side-effect of making more money from OneDrive is icing on the cake IMHO, not the cake itself.

supportengineer2• 11 months ago

I don't know why the concept of "files" isn't taught in school any more.

hulitu5• 11 months ago

I don't know why the concept of "files" isn't taught in school any more.

Because people who think, do not vote with the right party and, worse, they ask embarassing questions.

phkahler2• 11 months ago

This sounds like it's straight-up non HIPPA compliant.

layer83• 11 months ago

It’s the default for AutoSave, which can be turned off (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/s/gxcuf89792/images/b..., top left), likely also by group policy.

apparent4• 11 months ago

My Mac is always trying to get me to save to iCloud by default. I hate it. Usually I catch it and put the document on my local drive, but sometimes it ends up in my iCloud drive, which I avoid using as much as possible.

CharlesW3• 11 months ago

My Mac is always trying to get me to save to iCloud by default.

Nothing in macOS has ever attempted to lure me into saving to iCloud Drive.

I thought you might be referring to Apple's office suite rather than macOS, but I just tried Pages and it boringly defaults to local storage as expected.

apparent4• 11 months ago

It reliably happens to me when I'm using TextEdit. I go to save from the title bar and it defaults to iCloud.

daft_pink• 11 months ago

What’s really obnoxious about this is that my Mac and virtually other Mac uses iCloud and that doesn’t appear to be a save location or supported cloud service, so they are automatically fragmenting my files.

Additionally, my Office 365 subscription is a work subscription and this is my personal device, so I don’t want every file I work on to during personal hours to be uploaded to my work’s sharepoint?

I hate Office so much and wish there was a trully viable alternative.

layer83• 11 months ago

Let’s hope they don’t disable F12 to directly invoke the local file system Save As dialog.

CamperBob2• 11 months ago

Interesting, I had no idea that existed. Thanks for the tip!

bargainbin• 11 months ago

As someone who has Word/OneDrive foisted upon them on their work Mac… why would you force this on people?

iOS does it with its apps and iCloud but it’s seamless so you don’t mind.

Using OneDrive is like putting your face next to an anus and breathing deeply.

lenerdenator• 11 months ago

Someone else mentioned that the kids (what, with their damned loud k-pop music and Tok cloks) are used to using Chromebooks that autosave documents.

Also, MS wants more sales opportunities. If data is on their cloud, they have at least some control over your access of it, and the ease with which it is used in your daily work. It's a pain in the ass to have to manually save stuff, but that's what you'll have to do once you exceed the 5GB free tier limit. I guess you'll probably want to shell out for more space, no?

The good news for your work Mac is that it's your IT and budget departments' headaches, not yours.

Insanity• 11 months ago

.. and subsequently used to train an AI?

I don't use Microsoft software other than for playing the occasional games, this is a good reminder of _why_ I don't. Other than Windows being a hot mess of an operating system half the time, multiple different UI's that don't mesh together, ads being pushed in the start menu, and somehow more hardware problems than I run into on Linux these days.

jonnycomputer• 11 months ago

I'm already annoyed that, on Mac, ever since I installed OneDrive, I can't save Excel files to OneDrive while in Excel to my OneDrive, without Excel being logged in to my OneDrive account.

I have OneDrive because I want it to behave like Dropbox or Google Drive. Bug off, man.

devinprater• 11 months ago

I moved over to Linux last July. I had to move back because Google broke something in Google Docs to where Braille support would read everything each time I moved around the document, and I have to do my job. Now I'm on Windows and loving all the NVDA screen reader addons that aren't a thing in Linux because not enough people know accessibility.

1970-01-01• 11 months ago

More accurate title is: Word documents will be saved to someone else's computer automatically on Windows going forward

Havoc3• 11 months ago

Can't say I'm surprised. The office "Save As" dialog boxes have become increasingly more focused on forcing this on users & required ever more clicks to get to say C drive

Same for option to email people documents. On corporate systems its now forcing "share via onedrive/sharepoint"

UtopiaPunk2• 11 months ago

Probably a good move on Microsoft's part, tbh. Not great for society, but good for Microsoft.

I find it annoying because I often just want a document to live on a local device, and I'll decide when I want to upload it to a cloud service. But a lot of normal, non-tech people don't have any concept of how data is stored on their devices. I can't tell you how many times I've encountered a situation that roughly goes,

"Did you download the file?" "I guess so." "Okay. Now go the file and open it." "Where is it?" "I don't know. Where did you download it? "I don't know!"

For a lot of normies, just saving the document in the cloud is going to be easier. The ironic thing is that now I'm the one who is annoyed because I have no idea where my document is saved.

UtopiaPunk2• 11 months ago

In practice, I do keep a OneDrive account because I find the service useful. But I run Ubuntu on my primary computer, and really only interact with OneDrive when I feel like it through a web browser. I feel much more in control of my own computer and my own data.

keernan• 11 months ago

Lawyers, doctors, accountants etc have legal obligations that regulate how documents containing sensitive information can be stored. Professionals often work on computers away from the office.

Microsoft is potentially staring at tons of lawsuits if their actions result in violations of these privacy regulations.

rekabis2• 11 months ago

LibreOffice. It’s one of the best non-MS options out there, and lacks any of this sh*t.

dzonga• 11 months ago

this is cruel. watching a parent in their 60s use ms word on an ipad and watch MS lose the same cloud saved documents. and same parent blaming themselves instead of MS. so yeah screw MS for their cloud bs.

Rakshith• 11 months ago

All data is to train our AI overlords.

chaoskitty• 11 months ago

Microsoft is making it too easy to convince people to use anything else. I'm moving several people to BSD (Linux is too messy).

Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward

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