No don't save option in Word

Question

No don't save option in Word

Alex Hill 0

I have a Word document which I am attempting to close without saving changes. When I click the Close button, it jumps straight into the save dialog box (using a proprietary Microsoft dialog instead of the standard macOS dialog box) without fist asking if I want to Save, Don't Save, or Cancel, as I'm used to. If I click "cancel" in the dialog box, the window stays open. Even if I force quite Word, when I reopen Word the document is still there.

What happened to the "do you want to save changes" dialog box? How do I close without saving changes?

I am running Word 16.110.1 (26062112) on macOS 15.7.4.

[Tag moved from: Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | Other | MacOS]

Stefan Blom 344K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-07-01T07:59:29.3733333+00:00

Are you synchronizing documents with the OneDrive cloud?

For local saves to your hard drive, you definitely should see an option to discard the most recent changes, if you close without saving.

2 answers

Your answer

Stefan Blom 344K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-07-01T07:59:29.3733333+00:00

Are you synchronizing documents with the OneDrive cloud?

For local saves to your hard drive, you definitely should see an option to discard the most recent changes, if you close without saving.

Answer 1

Hello Alex

From what you described, I understand that when you try to close the Word document without saving changes, Word goes directly to the save dialog instead of showing the usual Save / Don’t Save / Cancel prompt.

You may first try turning off AutoSave if it is enabled, then close the document again and check whether the Don’t Save option appears. In Word for Mac, look at the top-left area of the Word window for the AutoSave switch.

Also, please check whether the document is currently saved in OneDrive or another cloud location. As a test, use File > Save As and save a copy to a local folder on your Mac, such as Desktop or Documents. Then open that local copy, make a small temporary change, and try closing it again to see whether the normal Don’t Save option returns.

Please let me know what happens after trying these steps, and I'll be glad to continue looking into it with you.

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Norah-L 7,325 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-07-01T06:24:19.2733333+00:00

Good day Alex

Have you had the chance to check my answer yet?

Please do keep me updated.

Answer 2

Thanks Stefan.

Digging into this more:

It is one particular document that has the issue. Though I do have OneDrive Cloud enabled and use it for most of my work-related files, this document is not in OneDrive; it is in my Downloads folder, which is purely local (not in iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive, all of which I have mounted on my computer). The document has (I believe) some macros in it. It is the OneDrive save dialog which comes up, asking me to save in OneDrive. AutoSave is not enabled; when I try to enable AutoSave, it says I have to save the file to the OneDrive cloud first. I finally found a workaround: in the OneDrive save dialog, I can click the "On My Mac" button, which then gives me the option to Delete, which closes the file.

A clue: when I open this document, it gives me a warning message:

Word found unreadable content in NRC_VISITOR_STATISTICAL_INFORMATION_FORM.docx. Do you want to recover the contents of this document? If you trust the source of this document, click Yes.

I do trust the source of the document, so I clicked Yes to open it.

Oddly, other newly-downloaded Word documents in the same Downloads folder do not have this issue; I get the normal macOS dialog box to Save, Don't Save, or Cancel when I try to close those documents after modifications.

So this must be something specific to the file. At least with the "On My Mac" workaround, I can get the file closed, so this issue doesn't need further debugging on my part. It is annoying and odd.