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My Top Reasons to Use OneDrive

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As you might have noticed, I am now in the OneDrive team. Since I’ve been here for a few months, I think I earned the right to start sharing a few blogs about OneDrive. I’ll do that over the next few months, focusing on the user’s view of OneDrive (as opposed to the view we have from the inside).

 

To get things started, this post shares my top reasons to use OneDrive. As you probably already heard, OneDrive is a cloud storage solution by Microsoft. You can upload, download, sync, and share files from your PC, Mac, Phone or Tablet. Here are a few reasons why I like to use OneDrive.

 

1) Your files in the cloud. The most common reason for using OneDrive is to upload or synchronize your local data to the cloud. This will give you one extra copy of your documents, pictures and videos, which you could use if your computer breaks. Remember the 3-2-1 rules: have 3 copies of your important files, 2 in different media, 1 in another site. For instance, you could have one copy of your files on your PC, one copy in an external drive and one copy in OneDrive.

 

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2) View and edit Office documents. OneDrive offers a great web interface that you can access anywhere you have a OneDrive client or using the https://onedrive.comweb site. The site includes viewers for common data types like videos and pictures. For your Office documents, you can use the great new Office apps for Windows, Mac OSX, Windows Phone, iOS and Android. You can also use the web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote right from the OneDrive.com web site to create, view and edit your documents (even if Office is not installed on the machine).

 

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3) Share files with others. Once your data is in the cloud, you have the option to share a file or an entire folder with others. You can use this to share pictures with your family or to share a document with a colleague. It’s simple to share, simple to access and you can stop sharing at any time.  OneDrive has a handy feature to show files shared with you as part of your drive and it’s quite useful.

 

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4) Upload your photos automatically. If you use a phone or tablet to take pictures and video, you can configure it to automatically upload them to OneDrive. This way your cherished memories will be preserved in the cloud. If you’re on vacation and you phone is lost or stolen, you can replace the phone, knowing that your files were already preserved. We have OneDrive clients for Windows Phone, iOS and Android.

 

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5) Keep in sync across devices. If you have multiple computers, you know how hard it is to keep data in sync. With OneDrive, you can keep your desktop, you laptop and your tablet in sync, automatically. We have OneDrive sync clients for Windows and Mac OSX. You also have an option to sync only a subset of your folders. This will help you have all files on a computer with a large drive, but only a few folders on another computer with limited storage.

 

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6) Search. OneDrive offers a handy search feature that can help you find any of your files. Beyond simply searching for document names or text inside your documents, OneDrive will index the text inside your pictures, the types of picture (using tags like #mountain, #people, #car or #building) or the place where a picture was taken.

 

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Did I forget something important? Use the comments to share other reasons why you like to use OneDrive…

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 28, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    January 29, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2016
    @MarcinI'm sorry things are not working too well for you. We will continue to work to improve stability, speed and reliability. Regarding Linux, the official word is at https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/6966503-create-a-linux-onedrive-clientRegarding Symbolic links, this official word is at https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/6840267-enable-multiple-sync-folders-or-syncing-behind-junJose Barreto
  • Anonymous
    July 04, 2016
    Hi there! I know you have to write about OneDrive - but you've not listed anything here that's not offered by every other major player in the cloud game. Except that every other cloud can easily be used by Linux users - but not OneDrive - quite a pain. I thought that Microsoft getting all BFF with Canonical might yield some improvements (OneDrive availability and Skype upgrades to begin with) - perhaps it will come :)
  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2016
    Like Martin this is another OT however for me,I fear that I tend to lag behind front runners in every case waiting a period of 5 years from release of a product until adopting it. My reasons are several largely related to the inevitable bugs/methodologies/revisions that have to be done for any new IT development together the current need of many of the black hats, for various nefarious purposes, to attempt to access these new technologies. So far I've been able to avoid many of the initial release problems by doing such one exception was a recent update to VS 2015 Community which effectively caused my Win10 machine to stop functioning though thankfully someone within the MS Win10 coding team (whoever it was here's my thank you) has enable the use of set points to mark each update this saved me from a very difficult problem as I was able to restore to a point before this failure occurred though it took the better part of a day to do so, certainly I will wait until I update my product at least a month to see how it other find it in future to avoid such problems in the future.
  • Anonymous
    August 10, 2016
    Hi. I've just found an alternative: cloudHQ (https://www.cloudhq.net). With this online service you can keep OneDrive an Google Drive in sync. So now it's possible to work from Windows 10 and OneDrive on one side, and from linux and Google Drive from another side and keep all your files in sync. Also works like an online backup.Regards.
  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2016
    Top reason not to use OneDrive - it requires to use Microsoft account to login into your PC
    • Anonymous
      December 12, 2016
      Well, to use a cloud service you need a way to authenticate.