Keep OneDrive without integration into MS Office

Hi and thanks for reaching out! I'm an Independent Advisor and a Microsoft user like you. Please allow me to assist with your issue.

You could add a registry entry to block OneDrive from Office. To do so you should be comfortable modifying the registry and always make backup before doing so.

Add or Modify the DWORD value "OnlineStorage" under HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Internet.

Available values are:

0 - Policy is off (all locations are shown)

1 - Only OneDrive Personal locations are hidden

2 - All SharePoint Online locations are hidden

3 - All Microsoft Online Locations are hidden

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/trou...

Please let me know if I can help you further!

Yeah but the files are not really in two locations.

When you turn on OneDrive PC Folder Backup, at the OneDrive settings Backup tab > Manage Backup, the files move to OneDrive.  You see the files in Documents as if they were in C:/Users/{username}/Documents but they are no longer located there.  The files are now located at C:/Users/{username}/OneDrive/Documents.  There should be no duplication.

You know how computers are.  You don't necessarily have to physically move bits of information to other places on the drive to move files.

Yeah that is the problem. The files are moved to C:/Users/{username}/OneDrive/Documents. It would have been so much better if One driver were not to create this folder and just pick up files from the Original Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc folders. And just like SVN or GiHub, just give a green check mark next to it, if it is updated into Cloud storage of One Drive. If it is not then show another color mark next to it.

For experts and intermediate guys they can differentiate the various locations and also keep track of them. For novices or general public that is not the case. For them there is a cleaner and better way of working.

One drive can be a very useful online storage mechanism. However currently one drive integration with Microsoft Products like Windows and Office is way to extensive and not configurable.

Is it possible to have One Drive installed on a Windows laptop, where it continues to upload files to One Drive cloud storage from say Documents and Downloads folder but not have any integration with any MS Office suite of applications? 

So if I were to open a Word document and try to save the file, then it should not show me a link to the One Drive. Similarly when I create a new Excel file or a presentation in power point it should not show me the location of One Drive. I will save MS Office files onto the local hard disk, while One drive running in the background will upload them into the One Drive cloud storage.   

Is this possible? If yes can you please guide me?

I am sorry, it seems that your response was missing. Can you please repost your response?

OneDrive just creates a duplicate of your computer's files to store on the cloud.  

Please see this video:  https://support.office.com/en-us/article/back-up-your-documents-pictures-and-desktop-folders-with-onedrive-d61a7930-a6fb-4b95-b28a-6552e77c3057

Yes CraigLong. The problem is that if One Drive were to do that in the background rather than having it on the front like in MS Office applications or in Windows File Explorer that would have been so much better. Like a silent backup which runs in the background, while we continue to work on the laptop on files stored on the local HDD or SSD. This is required because there are many people who are not that fluent in computers and who use it only for Word/Excel/Powerpoint. And having the same locations, Document, Pictures, Videos, etc in two different places (One in One Drive and second under My Computer) tends to confuse those users.