diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 97494de8b9..9b64b175b5 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 rmarkdown 2.27
 ================================================================================
 
+- Provide a global option `rmarkdown.files.suffix` to configure the suffix of the directory for auxiliary files (thanks, @certara-tzweers, #2550). By default, this suffix is `_files`, which can cause HTML output files to be deleted automatically on Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. If that is the case for you, you may set a different suffix in your `.Rprofile`, e.g., `options(rmarkdown.files.suffix = "_rmdfiles")`.
+
 
 rmarkdown 2.26
 ================================================================================
diff --git a/R/util.R b/R/util.R
index 5cac75155a..9d95e8e1b6 100644
--- a/R/util.R
+++ b/R/util.R
@@ -184,7 +184,8 @@ file_with_meta_ext <- function(file, meta_ext, ext = xfun::file_ext(file)) {
 }
 
 knitr_files_dir <- function(file) {
-  paste(xfun::sans_ext(file), "_files", sep = "")
+  suffix <- getOption("rmarkdown.files.suffix", "_files")
+  paste(xfun::sans_ext(file), suffix, sep = "")
 }
 
 knitr_root_cache_dir <- function(file) {