The actual problem here isn't cloud, but the fact that Microsoft Office's 'save' UI/UX is such a shitshow, it's completely unintuitive as to where a document is being saved. We have a massive problem with this at work, because people frequently accidentally save stuff to OneDrive, rather than on their local PCs, and then completely lose the document.
this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Its mainly because Office now defaults its save location to Onedrive. The only real benefit I get is the auto save every 3 seconds. Other than that, I always try and point it to local. However, at work we're migrating to sharepoint so eventually Onedrive save will always be encouraged.
And this kind of product is being delivered to the newest generation of customers on the company dime of one of the richest developers in the computing business. If that’s not a cryptic message from developers overtop the already extremely capable working machines environment hackers take advantage of every day, what’s in it for the middle men using this kind of garbage software? Surely they must get some compensation out of it! Sometimes I just think it’s gates telling all those people off that didn’t trust in the method. Like yeah, you use that broken shitty software. Go ahead!
That sounds like an application issue, you can run out of space locally as well (especially with the Macs that are shockingly stingy with the storage in the basic configurations and cost tons to buy the devices with more, and the SSDs were soldered even when they were more like PCs than phones). Backups wouldn't help to recover some work that was never saved.
I checked my Mac storage but it had 50gbs of free storage. then I checked the office cloud and it was 5gb/5gb
The point is you could run out of space anywhere, and if you're suggesting 50GBs is a lot and you'll never run out of space I think you're preaching to the totally wrong choir.
If you run out of space, you'd expect the application or OS to send some form of error letting you know.
A consumer program that fails silently and loses your data is not acceptable design.
My macbook has only 256gb of storage which is tiny so I always keep my files on hard drives, but recently I ran out of hard drives. I'll buy some asap
Its also a bad mark on the testing applied to office 365. The lack of basic testing from Microsoft in recent years drives me up the effing wall.
What should have happened is they should have tested PowerPoints reaction to saving a file to:
- Full local storage.
- Full remote storage.
- And any other file operation exceptions such as permission errors.
If your hdd had filled up I bed PowerPoint would have had something to say. It probably has no idea that the cloud storage was full, because someone didn't test for that and highlight that the cloud storage back end (onedrive) was probably never given such functionality.
As a former software tester I would have not signed off PowerPoint nor onedrive until such a quality assurance UX flaw had been addressed. That's what I used to do, I certainly affected the design of the software as I found the design flawed many times, not just unable to handle an error but also to have the wrong or non existent feedback to users.
When I worked in a company that used 365 (dont any more thankfully) onedrive was a pain in the effing IT support buttocks. It was constantly getting "stuck", constantly and silently failing to sync conflicting files, its UI lacked the basic usability features needed to let the user detect this and deal with it without me getting involved.
Take this as a lesson learned to always pay attention to what you're doing, and how much data you have.
Well, it should have given a warning that it couldn't save due to lack of space.
I'm so used to quick press ctrl+s on my keyboard from 8 years of typing on older versions of office without onedrive that even with autosave, i do it whenever i pause my typing. It's muscle memory at this point, kinda like pressing the space bar after a period.
The physical reflex is so strong I sometimes find myself hitting ctrl+s while filling out longer web forms.
Windows user here. I purposely map OneDrive as a network drive on my PCs to break any connection MS apps have with OneDrive.
Everytime i don't do this, I'll end up with previous versions when opening it and non-existenting versions of what I was actually doing in OneDrive dedespite having the full paid plan.
Interesting, have not previously encountered this trick. Are you on win11? OneDrive personal or business? Googling seems to be messy on this topic, do you map the path manually, or is there a OneDrive setting? If mapped manually, does the separate OneDrive entry remain in Windows explorer? I guess I just want to know how the drive mapping breaks the app connection. Or do you recall a guide that achieves this? TIA!
This one introduces what sounds like symlinks but they're not persistent:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-map-onedrive-to-a-drive-letter-in-windows-11/
I had on Win10, Win11, at home and at work. Always with files that are left open whole days on more than 1 PC. Since it do the networkdrive trick I never had the issue.
Plus it works a lot faster, as you're actually using files on your M.2 SSD instead of checking the cloud every time you make a minor change. Let OneDrive figure it out afterwards.
You can do something like, or any other shared path that will work for your user rights.
net use X: \\localhost\C$\OneDrive
It breaks the app connections for sure. Ever time ypu open a document LOCALLY it still refers to the https version. When you open it from X:\ It refers to X:\ which in turn refers to C:\ ...
You notice the difference in speed and behavior immediately.
I deal with a few family friends who have Mac and use Office. And they cannot grasp this.
Takes hours of training to explain that they have to click the offline save button, inside the save panel, to not get lost on a OneDrive.
You're right... I was actually going to hit the offline save button, but it said it's already saved and synced with the cloud, so I thought I was fine. However, it wasn't saved to the cloud due to lack of space in onedrive and they never told me about that.
You got two of the greediest companies apple and Microsoft together, how did you not expect that to be a limit?
Microsoft's whole move is to move almost everything to the cloud very little stuff based on your PC or Mac.
The whole thing is to drive you to the cloud and sell Azure.
Sucks losing work but this is the way everything is going, how much should they charge for an unlimited plan?
Because there are computer illiterate people get confused all the time when documents can be saved in the cloud or local, so Microsoft now chooses to make cloud the default location for saving documents. This helps many people, but it can also be dangerous if saving to the cloud fails.
The best way is saving to the local drive and letting OneDrive sync to the cloud. But you need to change settings in OneDrive. It can still be confusing.
Microsoft can suck a big one, use Google documents instead
German proverb applies here:
Selber schuld.
Not unsimilar to Schadenfreude and often accompanied by shrugging and even laughter...
PS: Sorry for your loss, though <3 At least you learned something more valuable :)
Running out of space will cause problems with anything. I just went to edit a config file on my Docker VM, and not only would it not write the changes, but it somehow deleted the original file at the same time! Yep, root volume was full (I really need better monitoring/alerting...), but after cleaning out some unneeded Docker build cache I was able to restore the file from yesterday's backup and all was well.
Moral of the story - cloud isn't the problem, it's lack of storage. It's always lack of storage. ;)
cant be worst than the ppl using google drive right now.. https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/27/23978591/google-drive-desktop-data-loss-bug-files-missing-investigation
What a weird all-or-nothing lesson to take from this. No, cloud saving is excellent. You just have to know what you're working with.
The real lesson is to not just assume anything's saved. Verify it's saved.
yeah, you're probably right. I was just a bit upset that this happened
guess I'll focus on making sure everything's saved.
That’s why I hate the push towards cloud services.
No, poster is incorrect. It is bad design on Microsofts part to have such an issue.
If something cant be save, you, the user, should be notified at the time you click save. It ain't rocket science and is fundamentally basic software design that should have been flagged up during the QA process that Microsoft no longer bother to employ.
No, poster is incorrect. It is bad design on Microsofts part to have such an issue.
If something cant be save, you, the user, should be notified at the time you click save. It ain't rocket science and is fundamentally basic software design that should have been flagged up during the QA process that Microsoft no longer bother to employ.
Ah yes. The "You are holding it wrong" response.
not just assume anything's saved. Verify it's saved.
Same goes for your backup backup backup, btw...