We have this shit at work, they make it incredibly hard to get a fucking attachment as a real attachment instead of a link to their cloud
Specially annoying since my organization is "geofence" but we work with people all over the world... So MS insists on switching attachments to links nobody can open outside my country
I speak from experience that no one other than professionals should be handling their own mail servers in 2024. I worked for a mail host. The amount of spam and attacks that befall a mail provider, even a small one, is bonkers. Plus, mail is just too damn important.
I wish it wasn’t the case because the idea of everyone privately hosting their own mail servers would be pretty awesome. Sadly the modern internet makes it way too risky.
Tomato potato.... My company uses MS because it's the fucking industry default and it sucks
I would put more onus on them if we were talking about some niche thing they refused to give up. But MS is what everyone uses and they wouldn't be able to ditch it altogether because MS has a monopoly
You can even convert a shared link to an attachment by right clicking on it before sending (assuming you're using Outlook web instead of the ancient garbage Outlook desktop app.)
Had that happen at work. I just drag-and-dropped a file into the Outlook web-UI, thinking it'd attach as an e-mail. Turns out, they recently changed that feature and you now have to drop into the right half of the area. If you drop into the left half, it uploads into OneDrive.
I accidentally did that. The document had personal data inside. That's a breach of GDPR. Fucking ace.
(I'm not sure that attaching to the e-mail isn't also a breach of the GDPR, since my company switched Microsoft 365 for various things. But yeah, I certainly would have liked a confirmation dialog.)
Maybe next year Xbox cloud gaming should team up with Outlook and Onedrive for the "Ultimate" cloud computing conversion feature:
When you drag and drop a file into Outlook, Windows mail, or Exchange, the file bounces around like in the window like in the game Breakout. You can only attach a copy if you hit every word in your email message. If you let the file fall past the signature line, it makes a Onedrive link automatically.
My favorite Windows drag-and-drop feature is that if ever I drag a file over the left pane of Explorer on its way to another window, the whole thing freezes up for a minute or so. I think it's polling all the network drives just in case I might decide to drop it there, and since my NAS is turned off (it broke) it just waits until the connection times out. Of course in traditional Microsoft style this locks up the UI thread. I have to remember to drag everything off to the right and then go around.
I once helped a person with their computer. They complained the they cant save the their photos. Well, their onedrive was filled to brim with crap, while the local 1Tb disk was empty because they had zero idea how storage and folders work. I had to explain her there is literally 1000x more fast disk space available, so please dont save into onedrive.
It's not really her fault. Microsoft pushes people to use their onedrive and pay for a subscription even when people have no clue what it is or what it does. Microsoft is just insanely anti-consumer.
This and many others are reasons a switch to Linux has been so joyful. No more Windows trying to guilt me, nag me, push me, trick me, abuse me to use shit the way they want. It's so much more....quiet.
I dont blame her tbh. I have onedrive completely disabled on my personal pc, but on my work laptop Windows defaults everything to onedrive and names the onedrive folders identically to your local ones.
Naming different things identically is a thing Microsoft loves to do. I still keep opening Teams or Teams instead of Teams. And I think there are at least three things on my PC called Copilot, and they haven't even released Copilot yet.
Had to explain that to my nephew. He couldn't save anything because iCloud was full. His Mac had like 300gigs available, but he couldn't save anything...
That's great unless that person's files get corrupted/deleted or hard drive fails. Then having backups in the cloud or at least ona a device on a local network is a good idea.
SO MUCH. Now my standard procedure is to just make a "_My_Documents" folder within Documents, so I can know where the files are that I put there myself.
(Leading underscore pops it to the top of the list alphabetically)
I remember some Windows versions had a Games folder for all that, saved games, etc...but it seems very few games actually decided to use it lol.
Adobe also recently snuck into their ToS that they could use whatever you made with their products for training AI and then gaslit everyone saying "we never said that" and changed their ToS. You know where you can't access my stuff? Offline.
Documents folder? You want to rule my whole computer, dictate some nonsensical folder structure and then you act like, out of the goodness of your heart, I can have this little set of folders, deep in your weird structure, to store my stuff? And you're even telling me how to sort it? On my own hard drive connected to my own computer?
And then at some point, games started saving inside documents. Ok, it makes sense to have game save files in a user area instead of a subfolder in the game install area, but they aren't documents. Just make a new game saves folder or something like that, don't just stick all my game save files in the same area, cluttering up my own organization.
Though I did solve it kinda by just making a new documents subfolder in my documents where I put my actual documents.
Firstly, no, it's not gone forever. It remains in your onedrive recycling bin for a month. Secondly, that behavior makes sense. One drive is a mirror of your synced folders. If you just want to not have the file downloaded in your computer, just right click on the file and select "free up space".
Is there a work around? I feel like every time I figure out how to keep it from uploading and just save locally, it resets the next time I boot up. I've been using word because the transcribe feature is very helpful for navigating uni with my disabilities
Insert “use Linux” joke. But I’m absolutely serious when I say that using my company’s M365 stuff using the web versions in Firefox on Linux is pretty pleasant.
Nope, I’m not sure I even looked for one yet. I don’t need auto sync and/or backup for my work since that’s mostly in GitHub and JIRA and the like. But it’s still convenient to be able to throw a file in there at times.
Sir if you will simply fill out this form in triplicate...
And initial here, and here, provide your SSN#, yes and bank account and a credit card number there, and mother's maiden name yes, and provide rights to the soul of your first, second, and third-born child...
Then you are all set! Oh wait, now just watch this advertisement, and this other one here, and this other one here, and also this other one, and we will allow you to save... hey, where are you going?
you can completely disable all the bullshit in windows including recall, copilot, onedrive and many more things with O&O shutup10++ and also DoNotSpy11
That's like saying "we can cover this switch on the wall that will blow up your house so you can't flip it." I would feel better if the switch wasn't even there. And now I'm wondering what other switches exist in my house that I don't know about. The trust has already been shattered and I'll never feel safe.
Jesus Christ, the need to use another opaque binary that has a non-zero chance of being hijacked to get rid of shit that should never be there sounds like the definition of insanity.
We use windows at work, which is annoying as a software developer, and I WFH three days a week. I need some files available on both machines and cloud is the best option. I’m not about to be taking a flash drive between home and work.
And they force you to use it if you want autosave, which is essential in a work environment given the stability of MS Office programs (or at least my ability to crash Excel).
I want to save to onedrive. So I can create it from my desktop, modify it from my laptop next week when I'm out of town, and send a link to it to the printer shop that's gonna print me some copies. Why are you like this?
Hey, no one is trying to stop you from doing that. I'm sure it is very convenient for you.
My point of view though is that automatically uploading my personal files to some corporation computer on the other side of the world should not be the default when I try to save something. Maybe sometimes I'll want to use that feature, but there are a variety of reasons why I don't want it most of the time. And I definitely don't like having to jump through hoops just to avoid it.
We used to do this with thumb drives. You can get a 128G usb3 thumb drive these days for like 20 bucks in the checkout line of most electronics stores. Cool things about a thumb* drive is I don't need to pay a subscription fee for it, it doesn't need an Internet connection, and it isn't liable to be rifled through by Microsoft unless Bill Gates comes to your house and steals it from you.
What version of Windows are you using, and is it possible you forgot about configuring OneDrive away? This is the default in most versions of 10 and 11.