Disabling OneDrive in Microsoft Office
Tags: misc, software
Published: 2023-10-24 11:49:51

---
title: Disabling OneDrive in Microsoft Office
published: true
date: 2023-10-24 11:39:38 UTC
tags: misc,software
canonical_url: https://siderite.dev/blog/disabling-onedrive-in-microsoft-office/
---

Original post at: https://siderite.dev/blog/disabling-onedrive-in-microsoft-office/

  Microsoft Office is everybody's frenemy. You love to hate it, but you can't do without it. One of the things that annoys me most about the recent updates to Office is that it tries to save everything in the cloud (using Microsoft's OneDrive) rather than in My Documents or any other local storage location. This might make sense for a lot of people, but not for me. If this behavior annoys you, too, read on.

  Of course there is no nice UI setting to change this, instead you need to change the registry. You do this by running Registry Editor as an Administrator and adding a new "key". Here is how to do it, step by step.

## Step 1 - open Registry Editor as an Administrator

![RegistryEditorAsAdmin.jpg](https://siderite.dev/Posts/files/RegistryAsAdmin_638337443780409650.jpg)

## Step 2 - go to the right place

Type or paste _ **HKEY\_CURRENT\_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Internet** _ in the top bar

![RegistryEditorAddress.jpg](https://siderite.dev/Posts/files/RegistryEditorAddress_638337455919548459.jpg)

Press Enter to navigate to where you should be.

## Step 3 - add a new _DWORD_ key called _ **OnlineStorage** _

![RegistryEditorNewKey.jpg](https://siderite.dev/Posts/files/RegistryEditorNewKey_638337455919604123.jpg)

## Step 4 - edit the key and give it value **1**

![RegistryEditorEditValue.jpg](https://siderite.dev/Posts/files/RegistryEditorEditValue_638337455919631104.jpg)


## Step 5 - restart your Office application

Now you should not see OneDrive locations when trying to save a file.

## Advanced

If you know what you're doing, you can also copy the following into a .reg file and open it:

```
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Internet]
"OnlineStorage"=dword:00000001
```

## More info

You can get more information from:

[How to block OneDrive use from within Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise and Office 2016 applications](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/troubleshoot/group-policy/block-onedrive-use-from-office "When you install Microsoft Office 2016, the OneDrive sync client (OneDrive.exe) is included in the installation package. This article describes how to use Group Policy settings and registry modification to block access to OneDrive from within the Office applications.") - here you have a more user friendly way of doing the same, by loading a Group Policy template and using it

[Keep OneDrive without integration into MS Office](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/keep-onedrive-without-integration-into-ms-office/cf1a17a8-2cdb-4e94-b70b-200c15147fd2 "One drive can be a very useful online storage mechanism. However currently one drive integration with Microsoft Products like Windows and Office is way to extensive and not configurable.") 

The OnlineStorage key is a sum of binary flags that are used to disable various locations from office storage. The list of possible values is:

- 0: This is the default value Enables all services.
- 1 Disables OneDrive Personal.
- 2 Disables SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.
- 3 Disables SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and OneDrive Personal.
- 4 Disables This PC.
- 8 Disables SharePoint On-Premises.
- 16 Disables Recent Places.
- 32 Disables SharePoint Online.
- 64 Disables OneDrive for Business.
- 128 Disables all third-party services.
- 4294967295 Disables all optional services.

Hope it helps!