https://www.libreoffice.org/ for anyone who wants microsoft to stop messing with their office apps.

There is also only office which has better compatibility with MSOffice file types
- This here.
  I wish Only Office got as much fanfare as LibreOffice. The UI is much closer to Microsoft Office and it tends to have better compatibility.
  I have both installed though and use them both lol.
- Don't ever save your files directly on a samba share with only office. Lost hours of work twice . It doesn't keep recovery files.
- Downside is ties to Russia and performance is really bad, as I understand it's an Electron web app, not a native application. It also won't save to network shares properly and will lose your file if you do.
I second this. There's a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it's not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it's been great.
- Office would have a learning curve too if you hadn’t been using it since you were a child.
- You can now enable a tabbed interface similar to Microsoft Office

I suppose this means Microsoft will not count Word doc file sizes against users' cloud storage quotas, right? Right??

🤣
It'll be like Google: everything goes in, nothing comes out unless you jump through difficult hoops, price continually goes up.
- Where do you think Google learned it?
- If you're in the EU, you can apply for a GDPR request to get sent a copy of all your data in their cloud, same for iCloud. Takes about 48 hours in my experience.
Mario_Kart8_deluxe.iso.docx
No, they upload your file, delete the local file, then oopsie, you ran out of cloud storage, please pay $99/month to access your files.
Anakinsmirk.jpg

This is certainly about making sure your files are safe and definitely not about stealing your data for training AI. /s

Don't let Murdersoft steal your data. Don't contribute to their corruption or genocide assistance.

Step 1: https://fedoraproject.org/
Step 2: https://www.libreoffice.org/

Thanks, going to try out LibreOffice. Does it has same (or similar) functions as Word itself?
- It's designed to be very similar. If you are already familiar with Word, you should feel right at home.
- I’ve been using it for over a decade now and have only rarely come across broken documents due to proprietary features. If you’re making docs for yourself, I’d say it’s pretty much a 100% replacement. Things can get a bit more fucky if you’re having exchanges where you edit with Libre and someone else edits with Word. But other than that, they’re pretty darn close.
- Pretty much. It was OpenOffice years ago, but then Oracle got involved and so all the devs left and put a new name on it.
- No. That's the point. LibreOffice does not send your data to Microsoft.
  LibreOffice is what Microsoft Office WAS without the bugs. If Word and Excel worked for you before the cloud, Libre is golden.
I'm 99% of the way on LibreOffice. Gave it a solid go, but the main thing I use in excel is too cumbersome in Libre. I think it's a great option for many people though.
As a clueless individual, how are they assisting genocide?
- For today, you can call me Jeeves. To learn more, a quick search for "microsoft genocide" or "microsoft gaza" will give you the answers.
  https://www.newarab.com/features/ex-microsoft-employees-expose-companys-role-gaza-genocide
  https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/21/tech/microsoft-employee-protests-israel-intl
  https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-israel-protests-2000648637
  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cger582weplo
  https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft-asked-fbi-for-help-tracking-palestinian-protests/
- Working hand in hand with the Israeli government in mass surveillance and (likely) AI-generated targeting data.

Let's say this huge breach of security and privacy is okay.

How are Microsoft ensuring these sensitive documents are not being transferred via or stored on servers located in hostile countries with lax data laws (such as foreign nations like the USA?).

Microsoft has already said it doesn't matter where your data is stored, it isn't safe from the United States.
But you can change this behaviour in settings, it's just the default for now.
So, if you don't trust Microsoft to handle your documents, but still somehow use MS Word and OneDrive, for the moment you can still stop it from saving your Word documents to their servers.
- Ms office 2016 install still going strong with zero cloud function. That day I lose it is the day LibreOffice copies itself from the laptop to the desktop. Aint paying for O365
- You can change it for now.
wdym, that's the point

https://www.libreoffice.org/

tell your friends.

OnlyOffice gang https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx
- I like the idea of it, but it is Russian.

tip: do not write about the revolution, short stories, hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, or your teenage angst and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.

tip: Only write about the revolution, short stories about your hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, your teenage angst, and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
For everything else, use LibreOffice.
- directions unclear, now I’m directing a netflix special on sexy horse guerrillas.
- bingo
So just bpmb threats and realistic beastiality. Got it.
Tina Belcher?
- Ha! Exactly where I was going with that.
Ensure to make sure every doc has 17 giant sized images saying FU MS
I love to kill cops _in _GTA

"Fuck you, Microsoft." -Everyone, at all times

Even if you're not ready to come to Linux, you're definitely ready to switch to LibreOffice. I dare you to try it.

I'm using OnlyOffice bins on linux and find it to be a fantastic suite for my (minimal) uses. Not sure how it works on Windows though.
- I'm unclear on the differences between OpenOffice (which I genuinely thought was retired, didn't realize it was still a thing) and LibreOffice. If it ever gives you trouble, do make the switch.
“Fuck you, Microsoft.” -Everyone, at all times
Eh, that game where you had two gorillas standing on buildings lobbing exploding bananas at each other was pretty cool.
Writer and Impress should cover Word and Powerpoint perfectly. Even if your colleagues use Windows, you can still open them just fine.
Excel though is troublesome, especially those with coded VBA or some plugins from companies. But for basic Excel? Calc can do the job ok too.
- Yeah I got through school and could work just fine now with Calc. I'm sure it breaks when you get fancy but not that many people get that fancy.

To anyone thinking "LibreOffice still has issues", here's the LibreOffice donation page to help them fix it up and be rid of MS Office forever.

No, I don't think they will. LibreOffice

Laughs in LaTeX?
- I've been writing all my college papers in LaTeX and it's been great. They look so professional, and it's easier to work on a collection of text files than one monolithic document.
Google doc for me. It is free and it is good enough. /S
- That's interesting, since Google Docs has always automatically saved files to the cloud.

Not to be used to train AI. We promise...

LLM's out here running wild. How Rude.Maybe I should switch to Linux again.
They'd break SO MANY international and data security laws if they tried breaking into people's OneDrive, it'd be hilarious to see the number of lawsuits they'd lose by default.
- they're probably already doing that to a smaller degree, and slightly protecting themselves with an obscure clause in their TOS. besides, you only lose lawsuits if you get caught - and churning things through AI is a great way to erase any fingerprints that identifies stolen data

Thank you to the skilled developers who bailed on OpenOffice when the shit stain company Oracle bought Sun, and formed LibreOffice.

I can only hope there will always be digital freedom fighters on the side of good.

I've donated to LibreOffice, and you should too, if you use their suite.

I love LibreOffice, but I wish there was an Android app. I've even considered learning more app development to try and help, but it's such a daunting task.
- This here. Not fully featured but a decent reader and editor which we hope will improve with time. Good effort on the devs!
  LibreOffice & Open Office Document Reader | ODF https://f-droid.org/packages/at.tomtasche.reader/
- There's a web port AFAIK, web dev has a lower entry level
- Check out the Collabra Office android app. It probably covers your needs.

You can turn it off. Opt-out is still bullshit.

you can turn it off for now*
- You can make yourself believe that you turned it off for now*
until your computer force reboots itself in the middle of the day to do updates it didn't tell you about, and you log back in and later that night find it uploaded all your shit to the cloud and just for good measure deleted some of it too as a fuck you
it's the Microsoft way
The true opt out is to stop using Microsoft products
- You can't opt out, most healthcate providers use windows.
  Mental health awareness? No thanks, I rather just write in a journal and talk to myself in the mirror as therapy.
I don't trust Microsoft not to flip that switch back when I'm not looking.
Microsoft all about opting out rather than opting in.
Perks of not signing into Windows/Office with a Microsoft account.... Oh wait

L I B R E O F F I C E

LibreOffice. No need for MS Office, ever

You're thinking as an individual. Excel in the business is what keeps Office afloat. There simply is no substitute. Even if you want to go with another spreadsheet, who's going to trust that to faithfully import Excel data?
- I'm not sure I even trust Excel to import an Excel file without mangling it.
- How many individuals care about what businesses do though? Usually they provide the hardware too, so it's whatever when it comes to what the company chooses to use.
  These are more individual concerns for personal hardware. So long live LibreOffice.
Tell that to my companies president.

At this point that’s almost like ransomware.

At this point, why even have desktop apps at all?
Teams and Outlook are basically busy glorified web browsers that load the online version... Now word is going to send your shit to the cloud whether you like it or not?
Google docs does this, but they don't have a desktop app to deceive you with. You create the doc, and edit it where it is, on the cloud, using a web interface that's vaguely "word"-like.
The only people this will "help" is all the inept business people that can't figure out where to put their data so it's not lost. There's lots of those.
- It’s way better than a web app! it ships with a separate browser the user has zero control over and with more permissions to abuse. /s

How will this work for (for example) cibersecurity companies that have reports full of client's vulnerabilities and can't have them hosted in third parties?

I would guess we're on the fuck around part and your question will be answered on the find out part
By their admins setting HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\General PreferCloudSaveLocations to 0 using GPO probably
A cybersecurity firm knows better.

Holy fucking shit, what absolute trash

They’re prepared to do anything to get real user data for AI training. This little change gives them easily millions of files per day accidentally saved to cloud.
Microsoft is recognizing that their biggest threat to MS Word is Google Docs, a product they underestimated in the beginning as being a serious choice for word processing.
Saving in the cloud means automatic backups and access from all your devices. Increasingly, people are willing to choose that over the real privacy benefits of local storage.

Which means an AI scans it...

No for most it's customers and an option for them all. MS is very clear in its policies. Any AI services you use, isn't sent back for training. The policy is very clearly explained and one of the clearer ones.
Business or enterprise users data isn't trained and individuals data can opt out
- I remember when facebook had a policy to require users to opt-in to having third parties scrape users data, but then it turned out a "bug" caused FB to sell everyones data anyway and they made billions more money than they would have.
  I have no doubt a similar "bug" will make its way to the MS servers if one hasnt already.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
  A lie is an assertion that is believed to be false, typically used with the purpose of deceiving or misleading someone.[1][2][3] The practice of communicating lies is called lying. A person who communicates a lie may be termed a liar.

This feature doesn't even work.

So many times I'll save a word doc, attach it to outlook, and it'll silently attach an older version of the word doc.

Word says its up to date, one drive says its up to date, but outlook still gets an old version.

It takes hours to resolve. Everything Microsoft wastes so much of my time.

Libre office does the job for me! Auto save on cloud sucks. At least you can turn it off! For now.

Auto save on cloud sucks.
Depends on the cloud. I like my files being automatically backed up to my private Nextcloud server.
- I understand, everyone has different options on this! I prefer to choose what stays local and what on cloud.
Auto save on cloud sucks
Why?
- Because I do not want Microsoft to have access to all my documents.
- because your phone/laptop doesn't have a global wi-fi connection, and you might want to open a document pause for dramatic effect outside of your home or work!

I still use Wordpad to write all my gay dinosaur erotica, am I safe?

Last time I checked there was Copilot integration in NotePad. So I wouldn't assume WordPad is safe from anything
Mr Tingle, its an honor, and you should be at the moment, but please consider a more proper way of writing literature such as LaTeX or Vim
- "or" ?
Chuck Tingle, is that you?
- I wish...
For now... Next update they'll add Copilot to it for reasons.
It depends how gay is it? And do dinosaurs mate in packs?
Scrivener ftw

This might be when I finally jump ship and go to Linux. I should do Mint, right?

Having switched many relatives to Linux recently too, Mint will be your best jumping off point for a familiar feel and pain free experience as someone new to Linux. If you love that and find yourself wanting more, then the world is your oyster! I started on Mint and ultimately settled on Fedora Plasma after trying out a half dozen different options.
- I don't want to type stuff into a command line. Like ever. If this is possible then I'm in.
Before doing anything you can try out different Linux Distros at Distrosea
The most important choice from the beginner is not even the distro, but what window manager to use, that will be your first interface and you need to be comfortable with it first.
Remember that most major distros now offer live ISOs, which means you can easily try them out before committing to an install.
Just do mint. If you don't like it, try another. I went mint and it felt comfortable and worked so I'm happy with it. Might try Debian next time for more stability and less cutting edge.
Yes. You may distro hop eventually, but you will not go wrong starting there from Windows.
I stuck with it. I am OK that somebody else did a really nice configuration out of the box for me. It's still an open Linux system. I make embedded computers do the right thing all day at work, and at home I've been getting more outside work done than ever. So any projects like setting up an Arch install to learn more about linux will at minimum have to wait for winter.
Aurora is my go-to nowadays
I found popos to also be beginner friendly, and I believe at the time it was specifically for people with nvidia cards but I'm not sure that makes a difference anymore.
Either way I liked that popos was being supported as a product by a company selling hardware, it seemed more reliable at the time.
Mint is great too, I believe both have windows style desktops you can choose, and also have app stores you can install programs through instead of using command line.
I'd recommend downloading both and then load them up but dont install them as you can test them out before going through the installation wizard.
Last thing is to make sure you know the category your OS is. You will need to web search for the more general category sometimes, for example with popos it would be Ubuntu. Popos and mint both have great documentation online though and forums and such.
Swoopin in to recommend: https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/

Idiots will still not know where anything is saved. Catering to the technologically illiterate has made society way more illiterate.

this is their patch for the whole disk data loss debacle

and also "let us train copilot on your college essays".
- Joke's on them, because those were all written by Chat GPT 😂

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

...or just use some other app for your private documents and Word only for work-related stuff or such. I use Word/Office at work and have absolutely no issue with all the documentation being saved in the cloud. But for private stuff I would have to think twice if I want this.

I switched to OnlyOffice for my work files. I have had no compatibility issues with my coworkers

You have to click through to a third save dialogue just to choose “Browse my files…”.

What if I'm using a pirated copy of windows and office?

You get deported to Uganda.
- Uganda be kiddin' me.
- rwanda. too.

I’d rather use old ass word perfect at this point

Just use libreoffice
I'd rather chisel text onto stone tablets than that bs.
- https://xkcd.com/378/
I actually installed WordPerfect 6 for DOS and MS Word for DOS recently. They're very relaxing for writing and fast too. Then I use LibreOffice to convert the documents to more modern formats if needed.
- That’s dope. I recently read that George R.R. Martin still uses WordStar. Maybe that’s why that dude can’t finish a book series.

This made my blood boil, and then I remembered I switched to Linux a month ago... all good.

I switched earlier this year. No ragrets.

Switched to linux. No regrets so far.

Of the installs I've done in the past year, none were absolutely flawless. One had an error that I just hit "retry" and it worked. One required some serious googling but I found the fix on reddit (rip). One didn't work at all, and I switched to a different distro that did work.

I'm not going to lie and sugarcoat it, but once I got past the install everything has been fine. Hopefully things will continue to improve

The breaking point for me was when I was showered with Copilot+ pop-ups on every single hover. Let me fucking copy/cut/paste/format in peace. I never asked for any of this, and neither did any user of any level of expertise.

Switched to OnlyOffice as it felt to perfectly answer my needs. There are still some quirks with non-UTF-8 documents, but you know what, I'd rather iron those issues out than be shoved a product I didn't request nor need at every single interaction I have.

I highly encourage anyone that hasn't done already to explore alternatives to the M*crosoft Suite, if they haven't done it by now. Every update is just the worst form of enshittification known to humankind. Can't wait to have an intrusive slop AI agent tell me how to do my Maths in the Calculator app next.

Let apps be just apps again 🗣️🗣️📢

Apps? It's programs and applications!

Why I use libreoffice.

Seriously, Microsoft!?!?

Is this on Macs too?!?

Is this on Macs too?!?
Not mine, then again I use nothing Microsoft on my Mac.

I'm interested in how they're gonna enforce this with my copy of word 2007.

- the new libreoffice won't run on your vista.
- Interesting, i haven't had any issues on that front
I do wonder how my copy of Word 2010 at my work is going to do this.

this operating system still costs like $100

/ per year
Try 150$ :(
- There are other ways, if you have to use it but don't want to give Microsoft money. One way is just not to activate it. Almost everything still works. There are also ways to get cheap keys or activate it for free.
  A better way is not to use Windows, but not everyone can avoid it all the time.
Operating system sold separately. Some assembly required.
https://massgrave.dev/
Who the fuck pays full price for windows? Just buy an oem license for like $15.
- i don't need a license to kick myself in the nuts

this has been goin on for like a year now. i have an offline profile with no onedrive on my machine, and tried the latest office. theres a slider saying autosave, but i was unable to use it. felt kinda weird that there is no autosave feature anymore. turns out autosave has been a cloud save option, and poor excel was not able to savemy private data to the onedrive datafarm. also the new excel is super slow compared to like the 2016 version, which indicates that theres more bloat under the hood.

The slider you're mentioning is specifically for cloud sync, correct. But as far as I know Word still does the thingy where it will periodically snapshot and allow you to recover previous versions.
I'm not 100% sure because I don't use it at home anymore but I still do at work.

Jesus christ. So glad I ditched MS. It's like getting out of a cult - once you see it looking in from the outside, you finally realize how terrible it is.

I actually appreciate this. The only place I use Word is at work, and nothing I create in Word at work is 'mine'. I do not care at all about the security of things I do at work (that's for our IT Security team to care about), and all this means is that if I accidentally screw up, or if my computer just up and dies on me... all of my work files should be 'safe'.

My employer has been going very hard towards ensuring that our work computers can ONLY be used for work purposes. Once I accepted this and embraced it I found that I'm now 100% free of Microsoft for anything personal, and it is amazing.

there is a reaching hand that goes further than just using it for work.
lets say you open libreoffice writer and write a party invite. you send this party invite to a friend - they are invited to your party.
your friend opens it in MSWord, its uploaded to the cloud and scraped for all of your personal data to train their AI and to be sold to the lowest bidder.
you had and want nothing to do with microsoft, but they are still harvesting your data.
- Export to a .pdf, automatically opens by default in user browser via local storage as a reader, bypasses MS
  This is still problematic shit though, on the same level as enabling Recall by default and encrypting W11 storage devices by default.
- I agree, however you're never going to be able to fully control things that you've sent out for other people. Even this post can, and likely will, end up as training data for AI. 'The only winning move is not to play' applies to a lot of things in life, and if you truly want to protect your data then the best move is to not create any data. The second best move is to not share any data that you've created.
I mean, I'm in the same boat. This doesn't effect me except for work stuff. But here's the thing, all of my documents are already backed up to the cloud via OneDrive settings. So this is redundant at best.
At the end of the day, one of the reasons I hate the MS experience is because they push things on you. Its not your PC, its theirs. Hey, you want to use OneDrive? No? Are you sure? No? Are you really sure? No? Why don't I just turn it on for you so you can see how great it is. You must have turned it off by accident, let me turn it back on. OK, OK I get it you really don't want to use onedrive. Oh, I forgot that fact once our annual update came out and undid that setting. You straight out uninstalled onedirve and altered your registry? Ok, how about we just upload Word documents for you.
Part of why I still hate it at work; work knows almost everything about me. People with poor understanding of PII have my personal information, and use MS products. Microsoft knows all of that, and everything that I type, the notes I make, the phrases I use, inferences on my interests, and can combine that with other profiles. It helps put together a much more complete picture and profile of me and why I interface with. And I can't opt out, can't use Linux, and can't just go somewhere else to avoid it.

I would love to switch to LibreOffice (or similar) but I haven’t been able to find a way to get tables to work in the same way they do in Excel, and that’s a deal breaker for me. None of the suggested approaches come close to being able to select a range, press ctrl+t and immediately be able to filter/sort/lookup using column names from anywhere in the document. I use that feature dozens of times a day, and so does everyone in my circles that deals with financial data.

What about OnlyOffice?
You can purchase the Microsoft apps , word, excel, PowerPoint, as a package that you own. There are no upgrades. You own them.
I am in the process of moving to Linux and Libreoffice at the moment. I'm working at getting myself off of Onedrive.
Once complete I will start the process of getting off Google. I've been using Proton for years and I am going to remove any other online support.
I think you name the range, and then you can do the same using ctrl+shit+L
I may not remember right, but I haves used calc and excel interchangeably since it was open office. Some things in excel drive me up the wall, some things in calc do to.
Either way, the best thing I found was get the data out of spread sheets and into something that can work with it better. Like sql or pandas.
But I get that for financial work, it is a staple. Which frightens me to no end.

Meanwhile here I am with ghostwriter

I used nano for over 10y, I'm a nvimer now.
I just can't ever go back to office UI stuff. For my designs I still have Krita and Inkscape.

Per the article this can be deactivated

Turning it on by default (opt-out instead of opt-in) is still a huge concern and needs spreading the word about.
- Oh very much so. Casual users are going to be donating their documents for AI processing and not even know it

This creates a circus act to protect documents. Thank goodness for great alternatives. I use a mix of LibreOffice and Cryptpad. Suits me perfectly.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Windows!

laughs quietly in Linux

Silence! The great Microsoft has decreed that from this day forward your documents belong to them! No dissension!

Proceed to the payment portal to pay your offerings immediately. Only those worthy enough to pay for the Extra^TM and Premium^TM tiers will be allowed to use the File menu.

What if I dont use M$ account? So it is just a local user, then where does Word back up to?

This is why Microsoft is making it damn near impossible to set up a new computer without logging into a Microsoft account. Luckily the OOBE trick still works (for now).
Office 365 requires an account to validate the license. Potentially it might work differently for the long term licensed versions (which features released to O365 now wouldn't reach until the next LTSC release), but I've not performed the initial install and licensing of those for clients yet
Or for home users who aren't already invested in a Microsoft ecosystem your best bet is to just use Libre Office
Edit: I accidentally made Office exclusive to leap years!

I don't get it, does Microsoft WANT everyone to stop using their products? First they fuck up their OSes, then they start planting shady shit in their OSes, and now it's down to every single goddamned piece of software they poop out! What in the fuck are they even doing!

Office is the product that helped keep Microsoft ticking over. The world is too dependant on Office and people won’t abandon it just because of this.
My fat fingers keep trying to type Microsoft Orifice.
I'm pretty sure most regular users will not even notice the charge, and find it useful down the line. Cause one day they will mess something up, complain to MS that they "lost their work", will be pointed to the cloud where everything was synced, and rejoice. Most users don't really care about the implications that their documents are in the cloud.
They're rent-seeking, more than they already are. The data must flow for training, actively burned bridges be damned.

Cool It finally gets Google docs core functionality after only 20 years. How innovative.

Actually it had auto save for more than a decade. It's just that now they removed the ability to autosave locally, it must be to onedrive.
- It didn't remove anything, they're just changing the default save location. You can revert it if you want, it's all in the article...
Google Docs has been a thing for 20 years? Wow I feel old
- Started using Google Docs around 4th/5th grade. I'm a Sophomore in college now...
  Still like Google online collaboration more than Microsoft online collaboration, so it's still dogshit after 20 years...

Some executive noticed that they can't sell you larger cloud storage if you haven't used it up.

Then someone on the office copilot team said they wished they had access to more comprehensive data about what people write with office apps and the rest is history.

Munoz backs up the decision with half a dozen advantages for saving documents to the cloud. From never losing progress and access anywhere to easy collaboration and increased security and compliance.

Munoz kept out the little details where nobody wants this and this is only a good thing for Microsoft

I'll just use LibreOffice, but... a lot of people just don't care. Which does also impact us.

Good thing I stopped using MS WORD a long time ago.

I stopped at MS Word 2.0, when the Microsoft people agreed with me that it was pretty much broken for large files, and pointed me to an FTP site where there was a new version... which also was broken. Long story short, that's when I first installed Linux and ran LaTeX and Applixware.

im using a cracked version, i also dont have cloud for ms, no problem there.

ODT is better than whatever abomination Microsoft calls a document format.

LibreOffice does everything I need except that their version of Power Point (forgot the name lol) is a mess to work with in terms of making the slide deck visual appealing. Automatic guide lines, snapping and smartart, to name a few.

Thinking about onlyoffice but I'm not sure if I can trust them since I read about then trying to hide their ties to Russia.

I have a Word document saved into my ‘personal account vault’ which is for personal thoughts (like a diary). Does this mean, they’ll automatically upload this too into their cloud?

If that’s the case, not sure what to do. Tempted to go back to old school diary but risk the chance of my family finding it.

Markdown is great for that. There also are some WYSIWYG and a lot of side-view editors. If you still want Word-alike, there's lots of office suites aside from Office 365. Or is it about saving notes to cloud? Even more solutions just for that, aside from plain file-sync clouds.
- Thanks, I’ll look into Markdown!
  Or is it about saving notes to cloud?
  No, that’s not it. I just want a Word-alike thing that allows me to put a password on it and use it as a ‘modern diary’ (like how you can make chapters and such in Word).
  Not sure if I explained it well, English isn’t my native language. So wasn’t sure how to explain it
Time to learn another language then mix them
Siu Mit USA De Fa Si Si Zu Yi
The Only Good Fa Xi Si Zu Yi Ze Hai Sei Zo Ge
(Destroy fascism in the USA
The only good fascist is a dead one)
Now just need to transpose that and replace some characters. Of course, making it offline would greatly reduce government/corporate surveillance threats. As long as your family aren't cryptographers, they won't be able to decrypt it.
(Its Tri-Lingual. Cantonese Jyutping, Mandarin Pinyin, and English of course. Romanization of characters makes it harder to guess words especially when it gets transposed with a bunch of others.)

No big corporation or state institution handling vast amounts of customer data will not allow this. Also really bad for regular consumer too. Microsoft servers will become treasure trove for hackers.

Bullshit like like often only applies to the consumer, not the business version.
- That's because we are not "customers"
  People can't seem to figure out that they are the mark at the poker table

This will make happy many companies...

See ya Ms Products! I hope you all like that cloud of yours!

"No, I don't think it will"

GUYS BUT NOW I CAN WORK EVEN FASTER AND EFFICIENT! I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SAVING BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS IN CLOUD! IT’S ALWAYS AVAILABLE! WINDOWS IS MOST USED SOFTWARE ON MARKET!

Gotta feed that AI!

This will be good for the post I saw yesterday where someone was working on some story for weeks and lost it all because they didn't have a backup lol

sounds like a 'service problem' someone once spoke about...

acquire your ms office 'elsewhere' and never link it to a ms account. same with windows. no msa, no 'cloud' to save to.

and there is a service problem here.

Me me guess - is this so they can train the LLM using the data we're 'giving' them? F U!!

I recently started using VisiData and it's amazing.

yet another reason to ditch microsoft

Isn't this already the default?

I have to change it on every single fuckin document already. Have done so for years now at work.

// I don't use Word outside of work...

It's on per default when signed in to OneDrive. Actually a really nice feature tbh. However, you will be promoted to hell and back if you aren't signed in to OneDrive. I like the feature for work but I don't like the idea of it being the default setting.

No they won't

Most customers don't want their users saving locally anyway for data protection and not having to do extra compliance and workstation management.

Of course folks here are acting like setting a default they don't like is insane chaos.

I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea. Too many people are still not backing up their data, and the article says "...automatically save to OneDrive or your preferred cloud destination".

As long as they really give users full freedom to choose any cloud service, I consider that a win.

"If you don't have another cloud destination, don't worry... we'll automatically save it to your OneDrive account we FORCED you to get when you activated your operating system. Why no! You CAN'T turn it off! Also, we won't let you edit your files without internet connectivity. You can never be too safe!"
Literally the ONLY thing stopping this from happening is they don't think they can get away with it yet. I'm NOT going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea.
No, this is a bad idea. It's a terrible idea.
What you said is like saying "well, I need surgery, having the monkey from the forest come at me with a knife is better than nothing."
Microsoft has proven themselves over and over to be the last company you should trust with your data. Even recently they've been responsible for losing a life's worth of data because of OneDrive
They're already uploading people's data off of their computers to OneDrive without consent, then deleting the local copies.
Plus their tech work culture is lacking. When they screwed something up with Office 365 and Outlook wasn't available for over 18 hours (for basically the whole world), their response was a tweet that it's fixed.
Whereas CloudFlare messed up something for only an hour, they released a comprehensive breakdown on their blog of what happened, what the root cause was, and what they're going to do to prevent it from happening again.
Which company seems reliable to you?
A definite plus if one option is to backup to self-hosted platforms.