After selecting a package, you create an account and a Microsoft email before landing on the Microsoft 365 admin center page. Simply click the square in the top left corner to access your OneDrive account on the web.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
A navigation bar offers the necessary file storing and sharing options. You can upload files to the account from your desktop or other Microsoft productivity tools via the Add New tab. Just south of that is the My Files tab, which acts as your drive. During testing, I easily dragged and dropped files from the desktop into the drive. Like Google Drive and other rival cloud storage and file-sharing services, OneDrive has tabs for shared files, favorite (bookmarked) files, and a recycle bin.
OneDrive lets you browse files by people, meetings, and media type, a unique filtering process compared with other cloud storage platforms. That three-group filtering could benefit every business, and I’d like to see more cloud storage services adopt it. OneDrive also has several useful management options for individual files and folders, with Version History and Automate being the most notable.
Version History shows who modified a file and when, and updates the file version. For example, a file begins as version 1.0 but gains a number (2.0, 3.0, etc.) with each change. The nomenclature and receipts are useful when discussing ever-evolving files with team members.
OneDrive has added a simple yet whimsical new way to organize your files. When creating a new folder, you can set its color to differentiate it from others. It’s an unusual feature, but one I can see myself using a lot. Maybe I want to make all my image folders blue and all my PDF folders red. It’s not groundbreaking, but a useful addition, nonetheless.
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The File Viewer has also seen some upgrades. Microsoft claims that previewing files is now 2X faster, and you can view more than 300 of them. When previewing an image, you have a host of editing options like color filters, cropping, annotation, and you can even request electronic signatures. It’s incredibly useful. I saved a lot of time by cropping and annotating files in my drive instead of opening third-party applications and reuploading edited files.
You can automate file or folder backups by adding them to a Power Automate workflow. This lets managers stay on top of the happenings by approving each file change. In a nice touch, the tool lets you convert a Microsoft Word doc to a PDF without opening and exporting the file.
If you have the Microsoft Copilot license added to your account, you can send auto-generated summaries of your files via email to other team members. Microsoft 365 administrators can use it to export their sync reports for better troubleshooting.
That said, I’d like more OneDrive security and training. Egnyte, for example, features a Potential Malware tab, which aligns with the company’s focus on safety and security. Egnyte also has Egnyte University, a robust knowledge resource designed to train newcomers on the software’s many features
