OneDrive Wikipedia

Users who signed up to OneDrive prior to April 22, 2012 were able to opt-in for a limited time offer of 25 GB of free storage upgrade. According to Microsoft these changes were a response to people abusing the service by using OneDrive to store PC backups, movie collections, and DVR recordings. By November 21, 2015, in response to Microsoft’s November 2 announcement, over 70,000 people had taken to the official OneDrive uservoice to voice their concerns. In 2015 Microsoft removed the unlimited storage plan for Office 365 Home, Personal and University packages, reduced the free OneDrive storage from 15 GB to 5 GB, and replaced paid subscriptions to 100 GB and 200 GB plans to a $1.99 per month 50 GB plan. On July 31, 2013, in a joint press release between Sky and Microsoft, it was announced that a settlement had been reached and as a result the ‘SkyDrive’ name would be changed to ‘OneDrive’. On August 28, 2012, Microsoft released a SkyDrive app for Android on Google Play store.

  • In some cases people have been locked out of their online accounts that were using Microsoft’s two-factor authentication app, losing their Xbox games library, and being unable to use their Microsoft Office 365 licence.
  • The OneDrive client app adds file synchronization and cloud backup features to its device.
  • This allows users of these web services and client apps to browse, view, upload or edit files stored on OneDrive.
  • As soon as the content of the file is required, the file is downloaded in the background.
  • On September 18, 2012, Microsoft also introduced a recycle bin feature on SkyDrive and announced that SkyDrive will allow users to create online surveys via Excel Web App.
  • Microsoft additionally announced the planned replacement of its 100 GB and 200 GB plans with a new 50 GB plan in early 2016, and the reduction of free storage from 15 GB to 5 GB.

Download as ZIP files

In July 2017, however, Microsoft OneDrive team announced that version history support for all file types was the top requested feature; as such, OneDrive would keep older versions of all files for up to 30 days. The paid storage plan is renewed automatically each year unless Microsoft or the user cancels the service. The update also improved the SkyDrive API with the removal of file type restrictions, ability to upload images in their full resolution, as well as a new SkyDrive file picker for opening and saving files. For the SkyDrive for Windows desktop and macOS applications, the update brought new performance improvements to photo uploads and the sync experience. On August 14, 2012, Microsoft announced a new update for SkyDrive which brought changes and improvements to SkyDrive.com, SkyDrive for Windows desktop and OS X, and the SkyDrive API as part of Live Connect. In addition, SkyDrive also provided additional storage available for purchase and reduced the free storage space for new users to 7 GB (from 25 GB.) Existing users were offered a free upgrade offer to retain their 25 GB of free storage.

Shortly thereafter, on August 9, 2007, the service was renamed Windows Live SkyDrive and made available to testers in the United Kingdom and India. The app comes included with Microsoft Windows, and is also currently available for macOS, Android and iOS. OneDrive offers 5 gigabytes of storage space free of charge, with 100 GB, 1 TB, and 6 TB storage options available, either separately or with Microsoft 365 subscriptions. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web version of Microsoft 365. Help your students connect and achieve more together, whether in the classroom, at home, or around the globe online with collaborative tools.

More apps in one place

SkyDrive was updated to “Wave 4” release on June 7, 2010, and added the ability to work with Office Web Apps (now known as Office Online), with versioning. Microsoft also added the ability to have full-screen slide shows for photos using Silverlight. As of 22 May 2008update SkyDrive was initially available in 38 countries and regions, later expanded to 62.

In addition, Microsoft has released a set of APIs for OneDrive via Live Connect to enable developers to develop web services and client apps utilizing OneDrive’s cloud storage. It is a protected area in OneDrive where users can store their most important or sensitive files and photos without sacrificing the convenience of anywhere access. In addition, Microsoft also released desktop applications for Microsoft Windows (Vista and later) and macOS (10.7 Lion and later) that allow users to synchronize their entire OneDrive storage with their computers for offline access, as well as between multiple computers. OneDrive includes an online text editor that allows users to view and edit files in plain text format, such as text files and batch files. In addition, Office for the web allows multiple users to simultaneously co-author Excel documents in a web browser, and co-author OneNote documents with another web user or the desktop application. As of November 2024update the service offers 5 GB of free storage for new users.

Integration with Microsoft Office

The Microsoft 365 Copilot app brings together your favorite apps and Copilot in one intuitive platform. Microsoft 365 empowers your organization to organize, and safely store files in OneDrive with intuitive and easy organizational tools. Anyone in your organization can quickly create documents, presentations, and worksheets within a single, unified app experience. The Microsoft 365 Copilot app empowers your employees to do their best work with Copilot in the apps they use daily. Microsoft has a similarly named but unrelated software plus service offering called OneDrive for Business (previously SkyDrive Pro). Closing an account without pre-notice is in most cases illegal in many jurisdictions, like in Germany.

Accelerate learning

The Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 versions also allow camera photos to automatically be uploaded to OneDrive. As soon as the content of the file is required, the file is downloaded in the background. Users in some regions may need to have a certain payment card or PayPal account to pay.

OneDrive initially did not store previous versions of files, except for Microsoft Office formats. Any current accounts over this limit could keep the increased storage for at least 12 months. Microsoft additionally announced the planned replacement of its 100 GB and 200 GB plans with a new 50 GB plan in early 2016, and the reduction of free storage from 15 GB to 5 GB.

In June 2010, users of Office Live Workspace, released in October 2007, were migrated to Windows Live Office. However, users were still able to use Windows Live Mesh, which replaced the previous Windows Live Favorites, to synchronize their favorites between computers until its discontinuation in February 2013. Create equitable learning environments that help students develop knowledge with familiar apps essential to both academic and future career success. Spark creativity and collaboration in any learning environment with a variety of Microsoft 365 apps and free templates to choose from.

The physical medium on which the information is stored can be either hosted on-premises or purchased as service subscription from Microsoft. It is reported that at least 100 users in Germany have been affected by this up to 2022. Some people using the BitLocker drive encryption software also risk losing their local disk data if the recovery key for their data was stored in OneDrive as per Microsoft’s recommendations. There have also been concerns about people who have been automatically flagged losing all their Microsoft account data even after being cleared by local law enforcement.

Welcome to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app

The OneDrive client for Windows allows users to “fetch” the contents of their PCs via the web browser, provided the user enabled this option; macOS users can fetch from a PC, but not vice versa. OneDrive also allows users to tag people in photos uploaded via the web interface or via Windows Photo Gallery. OneDrive can use geo-location data for photos uploaded to the service, and will automatically display a map of the tagged location. OneDrive allows the viewing of documents in Portable Document Format (PDF), and in the Open Document Format (ODF), an XML-based file format supported by a number of word processing applications, including Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice and Corel’s WordPerfect.

First released as SkyDrive in August 2007, it allows registered users to store, share, back-up and synchronize their files. Find your favorite apps, your files, and your inspiration with the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on the web. In some cases people have been locked out of their online accounts that were using Microsoft’s two-factor authentication app, losing their Xbox games library, and being unable to use their Microsoft Office 365 licence. OneDrive allows users to embed their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents into other web pages.

  • Any current accounts over this limit could keep the increased storage for at least 12 months.
  • On December 2, 2008, the capacity of an individual SkyDrive account was upgraded from 5 GB to 25 GB, and Microsoft added a separate entry point called Windows Live Photos which allowed users to access their photos and videos stored on SkyDrive.
  • It is a protected area in OneDrive where users can store their most important or sensitive files and photos without sacrificing the convenience of anywhere access.
  • Microsoft has released OneDrive client applications for Android, iOS, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone, Xbox 360, and Xbox One that allow users to browse, view and organize files stored on their OneDrive cloud storage.

OneDrive implements a “recycle bin”; files the user chooses to delete are stored there for a time, without counting as part of the user’s allocation, and can be reinstated until they are ultimately purged from OneDrive. On September 18, 2012, Microsoft also introduced a recycle bin feature on SkyDrive and announced that SkyDrive will allow users to create online surveys via Excel Web App. The update also brought additional features such as Open Document Format (ODF) capability, URL shortening services and direct sharing of files to Twitter. This update also allowed users to see how much storage they had (and how much they had used), a feature that had been removed in the previous update as part of the redesign.

The updated SkyDrive also allowed files up to 2 GB in size (uploaded via the SkyDrive desktop app). This entry point allowed users to add “People tags” to their photos, download photos into Windows Photo Gallery or as a ZIP file, as well as viewing Exif metadata such as camera information for the photos uploaded. On December 2, 2008, the capacity of an individual SkyDrive account was upgraded from 5 GB to 25 GB, and Microsoft added a separate entry point called Windows Live Photos which allowed users to access their photos and videos stored on SkyDrive. While OneDrive is a personal storage service on the web, OneDrive for Business is a managed cloud storage for business users that replaces SharePoint Workspace. Microsoft provides user data to local law enforcement on request, or when they suspect content that violates law is being stored in a OneDrive account. Unlike on Windows 8, use of OneDrive on Windows 8.1 requires the user’s Windows account be linked to a Microsoft account; the previous OneDrive desktop client (which did not have this requirement) no longer works on Windows 8.1.

In this update, due to the discontinuation of Windows Live Toolbar, the ability to synchronise and share bookmarked web links between users via SkyDrive was also discontinued. The OneDrive client app adds file synchronization and cloud backup features to its device. The Microsoft 365 Copilot app brings together your favorite apps in one intuitive platform that keeps your data secure with enterprise data protection. Your files and memories are secure in the cloud with 5GB of storage for free and 1TB with a paid Microsoft 365 subscription. Microsoft 365 seamlessly tracks updates, tasks, and comments across all your files so you can pick up right where you left off.

Data stored on OneDrive is subject to monitoring through technologies like PhotoDNA. These embedded documents allow anyone who visits these web pages to interact with them, such as browsing an embedded PowerPoint slideshow or perform calculations within an embedded Excel spreadsheet. Under such circumstances, re-sharing the Notebook to OneDrive may result in recovery of the lost data. Other file systems, including the older FAT32 and exFAT, as well as the newer ReFS were not supported.

On December 3, 2011, Microsoft released SkyDrive apps for iOS and Windows Phone, which are available in the App Store and Windows Phone Store respectively. On November 29, 2011, Microsoft updated SkyDrive to make sharing and file management easier, as well as HTML5 and other updates. The updated version featured caching, hardware acceleration, HTML video, quick views, cleaner arrangement of photos and infinite scrolling. Office Live Workspace also did not offer offline collaboration and co-authoring functionality – instead documents were “checked out” and “checked in”, though the service did integrate with SharedView for real-time screen sharing.

Changes are synchronized when a document is saved and, where conflicts occur, the saving user can choose which version to keep; users can also use several different desktop and web programs to edit the same shared document. Microsoft Office, starting with Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, allows users to directly open or save documents to OneDrive, or simultaneously edit shared documents with other users. In an update on July 4, 2017, OneDrive desktop client started showing an error message to the effect that the local OneDrive folder must be located on an NTFS volume only. Along with the use of reparse points, these changes allow files to be accessed directly from OneDrive as if they are stored locally.

This online editor includes a find-and-replace feature and a way to manage file merging conflicts. Users can also view the version history of Office documents stored on OneDrive. On Windows 10 and Windows 11, OneDrive can utilize Files On-Demand, where files synchronized with OneDrive show up in File Explorer, but do not require any disk space. For a single download, there is a limit of 15 GB; the total ZIP file size limit is 20 GB; and up to 10,000 files can be included in a ZIP file.

In June 2014 it was announced that OneDrive’s default storage would increase to 15 GB, putting it in line with its competitor Google Drive. Initially, the service provided 7 GB of storage and, for one year, an additional 3 GB of free storage to students. These changes caused major controversy with users, some of whom petitioned Microsoft to reverse the plans.

This allows users of these web services and client apps to browse, view, upload or edit files stored on OneDrive. Microsoft has released OneDrive client applications for Android, iOS, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone, Xbox 360, and Xbox One that allow users to browse, view and organize files stored on their OneDrive cloud storage. OneDrive in Windows 8.1 can sync user settings and files, through either the included OneDrive app (originally called SkyDrive, until the name was changed with a Windows update) or File Explorer, deprecating the previous Windows client. Upon the re-launch as OneDrive, monthly payment plans were introduced, along with the ability to earn up to 5 GB of free storage for referring new users to OneDrive (500 MB each), and 3 GB if users enable automatic uploads of photos using the OneDrive mobile apps on smartphones. On April 22, 2012, Microsoft released a SkyDrive desktop app for Windows Vista, 7 and 8.0, as well as macOS, allowing users to synchronize files on SkyDrive, much like Windows Live Mesh, and to “fetch” files on their computer via the web browser.