Using Office apps with non-Microsoft cloud services

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ISSUE 22.14 • 2025-04-07 MICROSOFT 365 By Peter Deegan OneDrive and SharePoint aren’t the only cloud storage options available. There are others that
[See the full post at: Using Office apps with non-Microsoft cloud services]

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glnz, DLivesInTexas, fisher75, opti1, windbg, John18, lmacri, abbodi86

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Proton is under attack by the Swiss government.

Andy Yen gegen Revisionsplan des Bundesrats: «Mit dieser aggressiven Überwachung müsste Proton die Schweiz verlassen» | Der Bund

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opti1, John18, dgc-art, Alex5723

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I have never used any cloud service because I am afraid of the provider being hacked and then bad actors getting into my personal I.D.

But I want to be sure that I can always get my data even if one of my computers goes down.  Like many others I do have more than one computer. So what I do is copy any files I want to be always available to me to each computer. I do the storage on external hard drives. I move the material from  the computer where it is originated to the others on flash drives. So redundancy is my  answer.

 

 

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Everyone should have their own backups/redundancy in addition to making use of the benefits of cloud services.

I am afraid of the provider being hacked and then bad actors getting into my personal I.D.

That’s possible but a more likely problem is a government requiring a cloud provider supply copies of data stored on their service.

That’s why I and others on this thread suggest Proton.  As described in the article, Proton doesn’t have access to users files because all cloud storage is encrypted with a password only known to the user.

A government agency could ask Proton for a users files, but all Proton could do is hand over a highly encrypted jumble that would be difficult, impractical or impossible to decrypt.

Peter Deegan
Office-Watch.com

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windbg

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I am strongly considering transitioning from my mix of Outlook & Google to Proton.

I did read your linked article but I believe that Proton would leave Switzerland if that law were to pass and find a new location for their service.

I simply have never trusted Microsoft and their OneDrive service to be secure from the US government.  Free is never free.

Now I need to find my tinfoil hat.

 

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You’re not even close to ‘tin foil hat’ territory.

Any US based cloud service is legally required to hand over data on request to government agencies, often without a warrant ‘national security’ and certainly without notifying the customer.

That doesn’t just apply to Microsoft. It applies to Dropbox, Box and any service which has your data stored online.

Similar laws exist in other countries – it’s not just the USA.

Peter Deegan
Office-Watch.com

 

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windbg

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Peter, absolutely great description of “The Cloud!” I’ve been telling people for years that you don’t have to look skyward when talking about the files you’ve saved in The Cloud. Thanks for your folksy approach. I always enjoy your articles.

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Peter Deegan

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Interesting because my wife is moving her small office from three PCs to three iMacs (three employees), and we plan to reinstall our existing MS 365 Family (Office) sub-accounts for those three on the iMacs.

Questions:

1. Will the three MS 365 Office installations re-connect automatically with their existing OneDrive storage accounts?
2. Does anyone have that experience (moving existing MS 365 accounts with existing docs from PC to Apple), and how well did it go?
3. Do you have any tips for any needed advance prep work for this move, specifically for re-installing the MS 365 onto each iMac and getting the right connections to each user’s existing OneDrive?
4. And how do you all feel about OneDrive being there to continue to do backup, now from the iMacs?
5. But more – my wife would prefer to use iCloud for the document storage.  So what do you recommend?
6. Finally, would it be possible for all the MS 365 users to share a larger iCloud account (for at least their common work docs) so the documents are stored in a single place that each can access?

Thanks!!!

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