Recently Microsoft Office begand having AutoSave on as default. This means that when I open an Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint Presentation or Word Document the Office application will have AutoSave set to On if that document is residing on a cloud location such as OneDrive or Microsoft Teams site.

This is dangerous as I often open various documents on shared OneDrive folders or Teams folders that I specifically do not intend to modify.

If I accidentally modify a document with AutoSave set to OFF, I will be prompted upon exit if I want to save changes or not. I can then choose to discard changes.

If I accidentally modify a document with AutoSave set to ON, however, I will NOT be prompted. My accidental changes will just silently be saved to the document. On a shared folder this can cause all sorts of problems down the line.

So how to ensure that the default behavior when opening a document/sheet is to have AutoSave OFF? Fortunately, it is easy to fix:

Open each Office application, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, etc.

1. Click File
2. Click Options
3. Click Save
4. Uncheck “AutoSave files stored in the Cloud by default in "
5. Click OK.

Compatibility

I think this works in most recent versions of Microsoft Office 365. I have tested this in Microsoft 365 MSO Version 2208.