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SOLVED: How to Remove a ONE DRIVE, CONNECTED SERVICE from MS Office

If you look for instructions on how to remove a Microsoft account from your Microsoft office so that things like OneDrive don’t appear in CONNECTED SERVICES, you will likely find instructions that tell you to click the REMOVE button or the SIGN OUT link. The problem is that the REMOVE button may not exist and the SIGN OUT button my error with WE CAN’T REMOVE WINDOWS ACCOUNTS.


how to remove a ONE DRIVE - PERSONAL, CONNECTED SERVICE from MS Officehow to remove a ONE DRIVE - PERSONAL, CONNECTED SERVICE from MS Office

In my case I was setting up an older version of Microsoft office for my father who does not want to deal with the complexity of OneDrive. Specifically he doesn’t want to be prompted to have his files saved there in OneDrive or have any other messages pop up.

This is fine considering that he’s ninety four years old. I’ve set up OneDrive for him to work in the background so he gets all of the benefits without any complexity and he does not need to deal with confusing locations in Microsoft Office.

Note that this is a standalone version of Microsoft Office that uses a product key rather than a Microsoft 365 license.

Fortunately, the solution to clearing your Microsoft office connected services is quite simple. Here are the three ways, the first two of which would not work for us, but the 3rd one certainly did:

1 – CLICK REMOVE

  1. Open an MS Office application (e.g., Word, Excel)
  2. Go to the File menu
  3. Select Account
  4. Under Connected Services, find OneDrive
  5. Click Remove next to OneDrive

2 – CLICK SIGN OUT

  1. Open an MS Office application (e.g., Word, Excel)
  2. Go to the File menu
  3. Select Account
  4. Under Information Click SIGN OUT
    • As mentioned, you might see WE CAN’T REMOVE WINDOWS ACCOUNT, so you will need to go to method 3

3 – REGISTRY CHANGE

  1. Click START, type REGEDIT, click REGEDIT
  2. Expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\SignIn
  3. Right click create a new DWORD value:
    • Name it: SignInOptions
    • Set its value to: 3

Close and restart your Office products (a complete Windows log off or reboot is not required.


Published by
Ian Matthews