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When saving a document in Office, you are given the option of saving locally or to your SkyDrive account.

Presumably, it's possible to add additional locations to this menu (Dropbox, etc.).

Is this possible in the Live Preview, and how does one accomplish this?

When I asked this question, I was not logged into a Live account. I have since logged in and discovered services may be added to the logged-in account, however Dropbox (and non-MS services) are not offered.

Account settings:

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    I'm guessing this will need some programming from Dropbox to appear into this menu (if it's possible at all). I really can't think there is any easy way of adding locations there, at it requires Office to "talk" (Login etc.) to Dropbox there.
    – Tex Hex
    Jul 31, 2012 at 19:54

4 Answers 4

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There is a document available on the Microsoft site how to add custom providers to this list: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35474 It all consists out of some registry entries, I guess it is doable to create your own, but if Dropbox is smart, they'll provide their own provider.

In short:

Integration with Office 2013

In Office 2013, the client applications make it easy for users to store Microsoft Office documents in the cloud. When a user signs in to Microsoft Office with either a Microsoft account or a Microsoft Office 365 account:

  • Open and Save As user interface makes it easy to find and use cloud documents.
  • The recent list of cloud documents that users open within Office 2013 roams with them to other Office 2013 installations and to the web on Office.com, if they sign in with the same account.

By default, Office 2013 clients support cloud documents stored on Windows Live SkyDrive, Microsoft SharePoint Online, or Microsoft SharePoint 2013; these cloud services appear in the Open and Save As user interface of client applications. The following sections describe how another cloud storage provider can register its service so that it will appear together with the defaults in the same user interface.

Cloud storage service must sync to a local folder

To integrate with Office 2013, the provider must have its own method for syncing cloud documents from its service to a local folder. This enables Office 2013 users to work on cloud documents even when they are offline or have poor network connections. It also enables users to open and save documents quickly, without the delay of network latency.

Registering a cloud storage service on a user’s client machine

The cloud storage service is responsible for registering itself on the user's client machine through its Setup program. The registration consists of setting some registry keys to provide Office 2013 with some details about the cloud storage service.

Office 2013 will look for registered cloud storage services here:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Cloud Storage]

The cloud storage service should set or remove the registry keys:

  • When the user installs or upgrades the cloud storage sync client.
  • When the user uninstalls the cloud storage sync client.

The cloud storage service should create a registry key using a unique GUID: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Cloud Storage{UNIQUE_GUID}]

The service provider should be identified by the same GUID on all client installations. Within this unique key, the following values should be set in the registry; these values are required unless marked [Optional]:

Registry values

DisplayName (REG_SZ) Display name for the service.

Description (REG_SZ)[Optional] Description string for the service provider.

Url48x48 (REG_SZ) URL to icons for the cloud service. The Url48x48 is required, but additional icon URLs may be provided. Include the icon URLs under the Thumbnails registry sub-key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Cloud Storage{UNIQUE_GUID}\Thumbnails] Optional thumbnail URLs are listed in the following list. If provided, they will be used according to the user’s DPI settings. The Open and Save As user interface will use the larger thumbnails (32x32 in 100DPI, 40x40 in 125DPI, and 48x48 in 150DPI). The Account user interface will use the smaller thumbnails (16x16 in 100DPI, 20x20 in 125DPI, and 24x24 in 150DPI). If not available, the next larger size is used. The Url48x48 value is the default.

Registry value name - Registry value

Url16x16 (REG_SZ)[Optional] - URL to 16 x 16 thumbnail.

Url20x20 (REG_SZ)[Optional] - URL to 20 x 20 thumbnail.

Url24x24 (REG_SZ)[Optional] - URL to 24 x 24 thumbnail.

Url32x32 (REG_SZ)[Optional] - URL to 32 x 32 thumbnail.

Url40x40 (REG_SZ)[Optional] - URL to 40 x 40 thumbnail.

Url48x48 (REG_SZ) - URL to 48 x 48 thumbnail.

LearnMoreURL (REG_SZ) URL to a web landing page where users can learn more and download the client installer.

ManageURL (REG_SZ)[Optional] URL for a web management page where users can view details about their account.

LocalFolderRoot (REG_SZ) Local path to the root folder for syncing of cloud content downloaded from this service. Once registered, the local folder root path must contain only single backslashes.

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  • At the moment, this post is essentially only a link. To make sure the answer remains useful even if the link breaks, please edit it to include the relevant information. (Your answer was discovered in an effort to repair or remove old link-only answers.)
    – Ben N
    Feb 29, 2016 at 18:59
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I've written a script that automates this for the current user, providing you know you dropbox installation directory. The script can be found here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/46565/dropbox_service_add.bat

Updated web archive link: http://web.archive.org/web/20161012215050/https://dl.dropbox.com/u/46565/dropbox_service_add.bat

The thread with full details on this can be found at https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=93098 No archive link exists for this topic.

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    I tried your script but not work in my case, possiblle because I use Office 2013 x64 ?
    – TheBoubou
    Feb 21, 2013 at 8:45
  • @Kris-I I'm using x64 on Win 8 x64 and it works for me. Did you click on "add a place?" Jul 10, 2013 at 13:26
  • Have you been able to get this approach to work across multiple machines? Whenever I try running this script on one machine the "place" shows up on the other machines in a bad state.
    – Jim Lamb
    Mar 11, 2014 at 13:55
  • Not working on: Windows 8 64-bit, Office 2013 Professional Plus
    – Shailen
    Aug 10, 2014 at 11:33
  • Thread link appears to be dead
    – Chad Levy
    Jan 13, 2015 at 20:58
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Another option to add both Dropbox and Google Drive that works for Windows 8.1 is found at this link: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Add-Dropbox-and-Google-94afd730/view/Discussions#content

You must first sign into your window's account as shown on the link. Then run Windows PowerShell as an administrator. Most systems hare a restricted policy by default, so in order to run the script you type:

Get-ExecutionPolicy

That tells you the current policy. it will likely say restricted. Then:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted

Sets it so you can run the script. Now type in the path to the script that you've unzipped and extracted:

C:\Downloads\SaveFolders\SaveFolders.ps1

Browse to the Dropbox location on your computer and hit apply and restart your office products and it should appear.

Go back and set your execution policy back to restricted:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy restricted

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So I ran into an issue after moving the location of my dropbox folder on my local computer. I removed the service, but it seems that the registry setting were not removed.

The batch files all try and add to the service, but don't try and update an existing registry entry.

To make it even more confusing if the original location no longer exists you are not even prompted to add dropbox back, it looks like the batch file worked, but in reality it did nothing.

Only fix I found was to find the registry entry and update the location, then you could readd Dropbox as a place

Note I'm assuming this same issue would come up with Google Drive, but don't have Google Drive installed.

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  • Welcome to Super User. Glad to see you answering a question. Just want to make you aware this question is quite old and has an accepted answer already. That means it is likely you answer will not get a response, nor be accepted.
    – CharlieRB
    Sep 10, 2015 at 19:26
  • The answer does not help if you've already implemented the answer. The answer I provided is for those that have moved their Dropbox location and now cannot get the answer to work for them because it was already implemented once. It is also not a direct answer to the original answer, but does provide more information. Sep 14, 2015 at 18:20
  • In that case, this should be a comment to the accepted answer, not an answer for the original question. You will have to earn the reputation to be able to post comments.
    – CharlieRB
    Sep 14, 2015 at 18:46

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