Microsoft Office creating multiple duplicate numbered files?

Question

I noticed that a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft Office was creating multiple copies of files that I am working on that are numbered. It does this for Word, PowerPoint and Excel. This can get out of hand as it makes a new copy sometimes every 10 minutes. I save my files on OneDrive and have been doing so for many years without issue. However, often when I am sharing files or folder locations, it gets confusing because there are so many files saved, and no one knows which file to use, and I don't know how to stop this. This also happens on files that are not shared. I primarily use One Drive on my laptop and have it set up so that the files are automatically downloaded on my hard drive. I have had this set up for years, but this has only started happening recently. Any help regarding this would be really helpful. It's filling up my drive will duplicate files and wasting a huge amount of time going through after I'm done working on something deleting multiple copies of the same files. Please help.

Answer 1

I'm also having the same problem, it's very annoying.

Answer 2

I have the exact same problem that also started a couple of weeks ago. It seems to be happening with Word and Excel files so I would assume it's a problem with all Office files. It does not happen with other files I store on Onedrive, such as PDFs.

And I also haven't made any changes to my Onedrive or Office settings.

And it's also very, very annoying!

Answer 3

I am aware of that. Nowhere in my query did I talk about using OneDrive as a backup. I use it for cloud storage of my files and to share files with others. I have been doing this for years. I do download some to my hard drive because I don't always have internet access -- but need cloud access because I have multiple devices. Otherwise, your response really doesn't help me with my problem. Thanks for the attempt anyway ...

Answer 4

OneDrive is not a backup, it’s a cloud location of your data.

The default installation of Office 365 and its OneDrive component uploads all the contents of the PC  \My Documents\ folders to OneDrive, (syncs) and there will be a OneDrive folder in File Explorer containing cached copy of all the OneDrive content. And in Word etc the default Save location is set to OneDrive.

No Docs/data is stored on the local PC

As such it would appear you have modified the settings in some way

A recent doc opened from OneDrive is auto saved, and as such no explicit save is req.