IT help needed ms utterly useless

[Graphista]

I have or rather try to have a single excel file for my household budget on my laptop.

Apparently I have to save this to one drive these days which I am not familiar with and frankly I am finding a total pain to use

When I try and go on laptop to work on budget file there is more and more files being created (not by me) and it's impossible to find the up to date correct one

I also can't seem to figure out how to properly delete the errant files without them STILL appearing on the list of files when I open office so at this point there are getting on for 20 budget files it's driving me nuts!

I've TRIED speaking to ms office help and quite honestly they didn't even seem to understand the issue I was getting passed from pillar to post and no help at all!!

HELP! This is driving me crazy!

Just save it locally on your desktop if you are OK about no having a backup. You don't HAVE to dave it on one note (aka in the cloud)

(You should though in case something happens to your laptop)

Open the latest one and do 'save as' to either Desktop or onedrive, you're choice, and call it 'blahblah spreadsheet LATEST' and close it. Delete all the other files that aren't the LATEST named one.

When you open the budget file does it give you an option of how to open such as App, browser, download etc? Are you giving it a different name when you save it?

That list in excel just remembers the last 20 files or so you worked on, whether they still exist or not. DONT use that to open your files. Go I to windows explorer and find your file, either in desktop or on onedrive, then click on it and open it in excel.

Who's creating other files? What you really need to do is get them to stop!

You can sort the list of files in a folder by "last modified" which will put the latest one at the top and delete the others. For files stored in the cloud, like on OneDrive, you can also turn on Autosave so that you don't actually need to manually save - all modifications are saved automatically.

Cannot save locally to desktop I don't have that option

Cannot delete all the other files - I have googled and deleted and restarted computer etc and they STILL appear!

When opening can only open via one drive

Some I have given a different name when saving as I have been trying to ensure I can find and access the latest up to date file but when I open this file it's NOT up to date as it should be (I have paper copy to compare to and the info is incorrect)

Go I to windows explorer and find your file, either in desktop or on onedrive, then click on it and open it in excel.

Get a different result and file EVERY time this is not working reliably

Who's creating other files? What you really need to do is get them to stop!

Flipping ghosts apparently! I live alone nobody else has access to laptop

You can sort the list of files in a folder by "last modified"

Tried that too

Save As

Navigate to desktop

Give it a file name such as Budget 03-06-2022.

Go to 'show hidden icons' (usually the ^ on the bottom right of the menu bar, next to the ENG UK, wifi, speaker/volume, charging icon, date and time). Hover over the icons until you have One Drive Highlighted, right click (two fingered tap on the trackpad) and Quit.

Cannot "save as" to anywhere but one drive

That last paragraph makes no sense to me whatsoever never seen any of that

In File Explorer, directly underneath the One Drive icon, there is This PC and Desktop.

It's there, you just need to navigate to it.

what options do you get when you do 'Save As' ?

You should see This PC or Browse in which case you can select Browse and then that will take you into explorer where you can select where you want to save it - eg Desktop, Documents, Onedrive etc.

When you see all the remembered files in Excel when you open Excel up, right click on them and select 'remove from list' to get rid of them.

I think the issue is you are opening excel, then looking for your file. Find you file and click on it to open it in excel instead.

If you use the screen recorder to make a video of what you're seeing onscreen when you open, save, etc the files then people might be able to help you - I don't think there's a lot that can be gathered from your descriptions.

Ok just noticing EVERY time I OPEN (haven't even done anything else to it) the computer or one drive is RENAMING the file without me doing anything except opening the file

Wtf!

I do not want it doing this!

Where/how are you opening it from?

What version of excel?

Is it a windows laptop?

Oh...unless you're using the free online version or the computer based unlicensed/not paid for. Then you can't - but adding the date in a standard format each time you save will ensure you have the correct version.