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Office 2013 annoyances: Avoiding the Backstage, slow typing in SkyDrive

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I have been using Microsoft Office 2013 since the first public previews. It is a high quality release, though washed-out in appearance, but there is one thing I find annoying.

In previous versions of Office, if you start a new document and hit Save you get a Save As dialog pointing at your default save location. Type a document name, press Enter and you are done.

In Office 2013, the same steps open the Backstage, a full window view where you have first to select a location. You cannot type a document name immediately, even if you are saving to your default folder.

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It is only one or two extra clicks, but it is annoying.

The fix is to go to File – Options and check Don’t show the Backstage when opening or saving files.

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Now Save works in the same way as before.

If you also check Save to Computer by default, it will no longer try to save in SkyDrive every time.

This reminds me of another problem, which I doubt is unique to me. I like using SkyDrive, but there is something broken about the way Office communicates with SkyDrive. It seems to be chatty, checking perhaps whether another person is editing the online version of the document. The consequence is that sometimes (but not always) editing in Word slows to a crawl. You have to wait after each keystroke for the letter to appear. Usually this problem appears only after I have been working in a document for a while. The workaround I have found is to Save As to a local folder, and to remember to put your updated version back on SkyDrive afterwards.

Maybe there is a fix for this behaviour as well. If you know of one, please comment below.

One thought on “Office 2013 annoyances: Avoiding the Backstage, slow typing in SkyDrive”

  1. Certainly the problem of the slow response from the keyboard and mouse operation do not only happens to you.

    As you say, it is caused by working with files load to skydrive, but not just Office files, the problem occurs in other applications too, in fact, is a skydrive fault at all.

    In my case, I even bought a new keyboard and mouse before I found the massive interference produced continuously by skydrive.

    I have not found any solution or configuration setting that allows to change this, so we are at the mercy of Microsoft, I think

    Regards

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