What is OneDrive and should I be using it?

Almost everyone uses Microsoft Office software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc). If you pay an annual subscription to Microsoft 365 for your Office software (as most people do), then you also have other benefits included which you may not be aware of. One of these is OneDrive, which gives you 1TB of cloud storage through Microsoft (1TB is 1000GB).

OneDrive works by installing a small application which creates a ‘OneDrive’ folder on your computer. Any files you store in here are automatically synced to your online OneDrive account. This means you can sync files between your computers so you can access them on both. Plus, you have a version kept online which can be used for backup.

Another great feature is that you can edit an Office file at the same time as someone else (called ‘co-authoring’), which can be useful if multiple staff wish to keep updating a company spreadsheet, or if two or more students are working on the same project.

Yet another great feature is that once all your files are synced to OneDrive, you can specify some folders to be ‘online-only’, thereby freeing up space on your computer. This is especially useful if your computer’s hard drive is running low on space.

The fact is you’re probably already paying for OneDrive through your Office 365 subscription, so you might as well start using it!