Microsoft Word can save your documents online to OneDrive, which can be great for data redundancy and remote access. But it’s just as important to save your files locally when you can, and it’s possible to locally save your documents by default in Word.

Why would you want to do that? For starters, Microsoft’s cloud storage platform offers no guarantee of data privacy with respect to, say, the US government. Another reason is that you may not be able to access your files without internet, such as when you’re traveling or when your home network experiences an outage. Also, it can cause versioning conflicts when documents fall out of sync for whatever reason.

Fortunately, you can set Word to save files locally by default:

Normally, when you select File > Save in Microsoft Word, it will offer to save the document to OneDrive by default. To change this so that it always starts in a local folder instead, click on File > Options, navigate to the Save tab in the left panel, check the “Save to Computer by default” box, and then click “OK” to apply the setting.

Now, whenever you go to save a new document, Microsoft Word will automatically offer “This PC” as the storage location.

Further reading: 12 essential Microsoft Word features to know

Author: Roland Freist, Contributor, PCWorld