Can someone tell me if I need to utilize OneDrive if I want to use Excel for home successfully?

Hi Cynthia,

Think of each cloud service as a storage location with a different set of rules about how files should be stored and saved.

There are lots of different cloud storage providers. Microsoft offers OneDrive. Apple has iCloud. Other popular cloud products are Box and DropBox plus many others. Flash drives are portable storage devices and can be formatted using a variety of file systems.

Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint are guaranteed to with with Mac OS and OneDrive. Based on experience of thousands of users here in the forum, most of the time you can get away with opening and saving files on other cloud services besides OneDrive. Other services follow different rules that can lead to corruption. There have been numerous reports that on rare occasions, files become lost or corrupted when saved to locations other than Mac OS or OneDrive. That's why Bob suggested that if you want to use a different storage location from either your Mac or OneDrive, that you move or copy the files to your Mac, open them and work on the while they're on your Mac, SAVE them and CLOSE them, then move or copy them back to the storage device. It's a procedure that has to carefully followed so that you don't accidentally move or copy an file to the storage location while the file is still open.

If you're planning on co-authoring in real time with other collaborators, you should stick with OneDrive. Google drive, the other major player, does not play well with Microsoft Excel. Stick with one brand or the other. If you want all of Excel's functionality, use OneDrive. If your requirements are very modest, you can try Google sheets. Just don't try to co-author Excel files while they're Google drive or co-author Google sheets in Excel.

As for who has access to your files stored in "cloud" locations, the permissions are typically that you have full access and that anyone you give a share link to also has access. You can also change that setting so that others can open but not edit the file saved to the cloud. Of course, if you don't share the link, then no one but you has access.

Thank Ron. I feel forced to use Onedrive. I usually export a pdf of my spreadsheet (SS) and then Excel asks if I want to save their version and I say yes. Sometimes I can save it to the same iCloud file that I put the pdf in but when I go to find the MS version, it’s gone. Other times MS saves it (including auto save) but when I log into my MS acct only the ‘recents’ shortlist are available to me, not all of my SS’s. When I try to print a SS from the list of recents, I get a popup screen telling me I have to change my privacy preferences to print! My privacy choices are just that I don’t allow MS to use my data to ‘improve their programs.’ This is crazy. I went back and forth with these MS tech guys out of S.E. Asia about 15 times, sending them screenshots of the Popups and my inability to print the SS but these guys just gave me the runaround. They knew nothing about technology surrounding Excel. I have MS 365 for Home.

As RonBarker wrote you are not required to use OneDrive. However, other cloud services are not designed to support editing of Office documents. If you must use a cloud service other than OneDrive it's recommended to download the file to your local device, edit as necessary then upload the revision.

Quite frankly, the cost of external storage devices has become quite affordable, they don't require the process described above & they provide continued access to your files even if the network goes down.

Hi Cynthia,

Thank you for posting on our forum today. I’m Bambi and I’ll be happy to assist you today.

Just to clarify, what type of Excel are you using?

Do you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, Office or a stand alone version of Excel?

I look forward to your response.

Best Regards, Bambi

No. You are not forced to use OneDrive.