OneDrive for Business is a great cloud storage option and as mentioned in previous posts, if you are already using Office365, there’s a good chance you already have OneDrive for Business cloud storage available as part of your paid for plan. With 1Tb of storage it’s a bit of a no brainer.
This post covers how to share files. See these other posts about Version History of Files and how to check the status of your OneDrive files and folders. Other Posts cover restoring files and folders and checking the status of OneDrive using it’s icons
Lets jump in!
File sharing can take a number of different forms. OneDrive gives some simple ways to easily share links to files and folders via email or directly.
Lets take my folder, AAA Documents and share it to my co-worker Rob.
I go to the folder in Windows Explorer. Right click and select the Share option.
You know you’re in the right place as the OneDrive icon is next to Share. You can see my files are also stored on this device from the green circle and white tick as well as the option Always keep on this device being ticked.
My share box appears
The default option is Anyone with the link can edit. This means that a link is sent to Rob. If Rob clicks on it, he will see a web page with the files contained in that folder. He will be able to edit Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc) documents using Office Online.
He will also be able to download a copy of the file as well as upload files to that location. He will not be able to delete files or overwrite the original file. If he changes a file, we can always go back using the file versions mentioned in this post. Below, you can see word online in action. This is very useful for sharing outside of the organisation as anyone who gets the link can access the files.
There are other options and its worth mentioning here that all of the security features here can be locked by the administrator to closely control and monitor how access to data is allowed.
Files that cannot be edited using office online can all be downloaded.
I can choose a few ways to send the link, I can enter an email address here and even type a message to Rob. I can copy the link and share it, say via a messaging app, I can select Outlook and this will create a new message with the link in, ready to be addressed and sent.
All this is great and it’s comparable to Google Drive which is really centred about online working. However, most of us want the files on our computer and working in internal teams that are distributed, it’s really useful to have the full power of Office and files on your device.
To do this, users must have a OneDrive account and have OneDrive installed and logged in. Otherwise they get issues so my next post will be about how to configure OneDrive ready for file sharing.