OneDrive

OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage service, and it can be accessed from the web, smartphones and other mobile devices, Macs, and PCs running Windows 10 or 11. That latter bit is of particular interest to us here: OneDrive is deeply integrated with Windows 11, allowing users to automatically back up and sync content between the cloud and their PCs.

What about storage?

Anyone with a Microsoft account gets 5 GB of free OneDrive storage space. But you can pay more to get more storage: those with a Microsoft 365 Basic ($19.99 per year) subscription get an additional 100 GB of storage, while those with Microsoft 365 Personal ($69.99 per year) or Family ($99.99 per year) subscriptions get an additional 1 TB of OneDrive storage per user. You can compare these offerings on the Microsoft website.

And once you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you can add additional storage in 200 GB ($1.99 per month), 400 GB ($3.99 per month), 600 GB ($5.99 per month), 800 GB ($7.99 per month), or 1 TB ($9.99 per month) allotments. So a Microsoft 365 subscription is the best choice for those who need a lot of storage.

Get to know OneDrive in Windows 11

Because Microsoft requires most users to sign in to Windows 11 with a Microsoft account, OneDrive is a key part of the experience.

During Setup, for example, you are told that some key user folders—Desktop, Documents, and Pictures—are being backed up automatically to OneDrive.

And when you open File Explorer, you will see that the files in your OneDrive storage are accessible alongside the local files on your PC.

Best of all, you can configure some or all of it to be available offline, because Windows 11 can sync your OneDrive content using a feature called Files On-Demand.

We examine each of these capabilities in this chapter.

Configure OneDrive

Because of its deep integration with Windows 11, OneDrive offers a wide range of configuration options. These are available in OneDrive Settings, which requires a multi-step process to find and open.

To do so, locate the OneDrive icon (it resembles a cloud) in the system tray. This might be visible on the Taskbar, but it could also be hidden in the Taskbar overflow area.

Select this icon to open the OneDrive pane. Then, select the Help & Settings icon (it resembles a gear) in the upper right to display a menu. Select the “Settings” item to display OneDrive Settings.

Here, you can access numerous OneDrive options across three main pages—Sync and backup, Account, and About—each of which is accessible from the navigation pane on the left alongside a quick peek at your cloud storage usage and a button so you can manage OneDrive on the web.

We will examine the most important OneDrive options in the following sections.

You can further configure OneDrive in File Explorer as well. This is described later in the chapter.

Configure OneDrive folder backup

By default, Windows 11 is configured to back up three key user folders—Desktop, Documents, and Pictures—to OneDrive. It does this by redirecting these file system locations to similar locations inside of OneDrive. That is, instead of using C:\Users[user name]\Desktop as the location for your Desktop folder, it will use C:\Users[user name]OneDrive\Desktop.

Obviously, there are benefits to this feature. For example, anything you store in one of these folders will be backed up to the cloud and will be accessible from any device that supports OneDrive. Additionally, if you sign into Windows 10 or 11 on another PC, the contents of those folders will be synced to that PC so that those contents will be accessible there as well. You can edit, move, or delete files in those folders and the changes will be reflected everywhere.

That said, some people may not want to back up these folders to OneDrive because they don’t want to use up too much of their OneDrive storage allotment, don’t use those folders anyway, or use other cloud storage services.

However you feel about this feature, you should at least examine how OneDrive backup is configured when you upgrade to Windows 11 (or a new version of Windows 11) or set up Windows 11 on a new PC. And, if desired, disable the automatic backup of one or more of those folders.

To do so, open OneDrive Settings, which displays the Sync and backup page by default. Then, select the “Manage backup” button to display the Sync and protect your folders in OneDrive window.

Here, you will see toggle switches for the three folder locations that OneDrive automatically backs up—Documents, Pictures, and Desktop—plus two other important folders in your user account, Music and Videos. You can toggle each folder as you wish and then click “Save changes” if required.

Choose which OneDrive folders appear in Windows 11

By default, File Explorer will display the entire contents of your OneDrive storage in Windows 11. But you can choose to hide one or more folders from File Explorer and display only those folders you will need to access from your PC.

One side effect of this change is that any files in a folder that was syncing to the PC will be deleted from the PC. These files will remain in OneDrive, of course, but doing this will free up store space on your PC.

To make this change, open OneDrive Settings and navigate to the Account page. Then, select the “Choose folders” button to display the Choose folders window.

Here, you can expand and contract your OneDrive folder hierarchy and deselect those folders you don’t want to see on your PC. Press “OK” when you’re done. Then, open File Explorer and navigate to OneDrive to see the change.

Manage OneDrive notifications

By default, OneDrive can be a bit chatty, in that it displays notification banners for several different reasons, including informational alerts when the service has created an “On this day” slideshow. Some may find these notifications annoying and be tempted to disable them entirely (which you can do from the notification banner’s “Settings” [“…”] link or in the Settings app at System > Notifications). But you can also configure which types of notifications that OneDrive displays instead.

To do so, open OneDrive Settings and navigate to the Notifications page. Toggle the notifications you don’t wish to see to “Off.”

Disable OneDrive

If you don’t use OneDrive, you may as well disable it. This way, the app doesn’t auto-start when Windows boots, and you won’t see a OneDrive entry in File Explorer.

To do so, open OneDrive Settings, navigate to the Account page, and select the “Unlink this PC” link. Click “Unlink account” when prompted. Then, close the Set up OneDrive window that appears.

Next, open Task Manager (quickest way: type CTRL + SHIFT + ESC), and navigate to the Startup view. Locate the Microsoft OneDrive entry in the list, right-click it, and choose “Disable.”

Then, restart your PC.

Configure how OneDrive works in File Explorer

Because most of your interactions with your OneDrive content occurs in File Explorer, that application also offers a few OneDrive-related options you can configure.

Make OneDrive the default home page in File Explorer

If you use OneDrive extensively, you may wish to make OneDrive the default home page in File Explorer. When you make this change, File Explorer will navigate to the root of OneDrive every time it’s launched, rather than the default Home view.

To make this change, open File Explorer, select the See more (“…”) command bar item, and then select “Options” from the menu that appears. The Folder Options window will appear. Here, select “[user name] – Personal” from the “Open File Explorer to:” drop-down and then select “OK.”

Change where OneDrive is located on your PC

By default, Windows 11 places your OneDrive folder inside of your user account folder structure, at C:\Users[user name]\OneDrive. This isn’t something you need to think about all that often, since File Explorer provides a link to OneDrive in its navigation bar. But can move OneDrive to a new location if you’d like. For example, those with desktop PCs sometimes have two drives, with a solid-state drive as the system disk (C:) and a large, traditional hard drive (D:) that’s used for data. And you may wish to move OneDrive from C:\ to that larger D:\ drive.

To do so, open OneDrive settings and navigate to the Account tab. Then, select the “Unlink this PC” link. Windows will prompt you to explain what will happen if you proceed.

Select “Unlink account.” A Set up OneDrive window will appear.

Enter the email address for your Microsoft account as prompted and handle any two-step authentication requirements. Then, step through a series of mostly promotional windows until you arrive at one titled “Your OneDrive folder.”

Here, you will find a link, “Change location,” that lets you choose a new location for the OneDrive folder. Simply use the Choose your OneDrive location window—a renamed Open file dialog window—to choose a new location.

Note that a OneDrive folder will be created for you in whatever location you choose.

After this, you will need to step through several other windows in which you can configure OneDrive folder backup and then learn more about OneDrive. When you’re done, File Explorer will open to OneDrive, which is now in its new location on your PC.

The original OneDrive folder remains on your PC after this change, and it will include any files you downloaded or synced to this PC. You can leave it there, of course, but if you delete it, it will free up whatever storage space it is taking up.

Display availability status in the File Explorer navigation bar

File Explorer displays an availability status icon for every OneDrive file and folder it displays in its main view. But you can enable this feature in the File Explorer navigation bar as well. This can be useful when OneDrive folders are displayed in the navigation pane. For example, you may pin shortcuts to OneDrive locations to Quick access, which then appear in the navigation bar.

To understand how this changes things, consider the navigation bar, in which there are two OneDrive folders, Documents and Saved Pictures, pinned to the Quick access area in the File Explorer navigation pane.

And here is this same view, but with display availability status enabled.

As you can see, the Documents folder is online-only (not synced), while the Saved Pictures folder is always available (synced).

To make this change, open Folder Options (File Explorer > “See more” > Options), navigate to the View pane, and scroll down to the bottom of the list of options under Advanced settings. In the Navigation pane section, locate “Always show availability status” and enable that option.

Access your OneDrive content at any time from your PC

Before cloud computing, we saved documents and other files to folders in the file systems of our PCs and would, hopefully, back them up from time to time to a removable or network-attached drive. But with OneDrive and other cloud-based storage services, a more reliable and secure strategy emerged: now, we can automatically replicate the documents and other files we work with to the cloud, ensuring that they are, in effect, backed up to a different geographical location and, as good, be easily accessible on other compatible devices.

Looking at OneDrive specifically, Microsoft’s cloud storage service deeply integrates with Windows 11 using a feature called Files On-Demand. When you view the PC’s file system using File Explorer, the contents of our OneDrive, including whatever folder structures you’ve created within there, are visible and accessible. Even better, you can optionally choose to make any or all of the contents of OneDrive available at all times by replicating those files to the PC so that they are available when the PC is offline. Any changes made on this PC are synced to the cloud and to any other connected PCs and devices. And any changes made elsewhere are likewise synced to this PC.

To see what this looks like, open File Explorer and select the “[user name] – Personal” icon near the top of the navigation bar on the left. When you do, the contents of your OneDrive storage appear on the right.

This OneDrive entry in the navigation pane is a nicety that simplifies the presentation of your OneDrive files in Windows 11. But the files that make up the local version of these contents can also be found in your PC’s file system. To see this, open File Explorer and navigate to C:\Users[user name]\OneDrive. You will (literally) see the same folders and files as when you just select “[user name] – Personal” in the navigation bar.

By default, any OneDrive-based files that you view using File Explorer are not actually on your PC. Instead, they are in the cloud and Windows displays a lightweight representation of those files, which includes thumbnails in many cases and detailed file information. In the language of Files On-Demand, these files are said to be online-only files. They are visible in your PC’s file system. But they are not stored in their original form in the file system.

To better understand this, consider the following Properties dialog for an online-only file. As you can see, its size is 1.08 MB; this represents how much storage this file actually takes up. But its size on disk is (roughly) 0 bytes. It takes up almost no space at all. That’s the magic of Files On-Demand.

Make files always available

Of course, the downside to online-only files is that they are only viewable in the file system. But you can make them accessible in the file system, too. Doing so downloads them to the PC, so that they are always available, even when the PC is offline, and it keeps them synced with the master files in OneDrive in the cloud. In the language of Files On-Demand, such files are said to be “always available files.”

There are two ways to do this:

Open the file. If you double-click an online-only file in File Explorer, it will download from OneDrive and then open normally.

Configure one or more files or folders to always be available on this PC. If you right-click a file, folder, or selection of files and/or folders in OneDrive, you can select the “Always keep on this device” item in the context menu that appears to download the selected items to this PC and then keep them in sync with OneDrive in the cloud going forward.

Free up space by making synced files online-only

You can also reverse the changes described above. To remove the local version of an always available file and free up some local storage space, right-click it and choose “Free up space” from the context menu that appears.

This will, of course, work with multiple selected files at once and with entire folders.

Quickly determine which files are available offline and which aren’t

As you work with OneDrive files in File Explorer, you will notice that all OneDrive folder views display a Status indicator icon for each file in that folder. There are three possible icons, and these serve to help you quickly determine the offline availability of each.

They are:

This icon—a white cloud with a blue outline—means that the file is an online-only file. This is the default status for all OneDrive files, and the most common icon you will see.

This icon—a green checkmark on white—indicates that you double-clicked this file to open it locally. This file is available offline but it will transition into the next status state, below, over time.

This icon—a white checkmark on solid green—indicates that you explicitly marked this item to be always available, so it is synced with the cloud and available even if the PC is offline.

Share OneDrive files with others

File Explorer lets you share files with others using email, Nearby sharing, or apps. But if the files you wish to share are stored in OneDrive, the experience changes. That’s because OneDrive doesn’t need to use your PC as an intermediary: instead of manually sending these files to others, you can create a link for them to use to access those files directly from OneDrive. This link will let the other person view the file(s) in OneDrive in the cloud (in a web browser), download them, and, if allowed, edit them.

To see this in action, select one or more OneDrive-based files and/or folders with File Explorer and then select the “Share” icon in the app’s command bar.

The OneDrive share window appears.

Here, you can choose how to send the link and configure permissions for the shared files. There are two choices:

Send link. Here, you add recipients in the “To:” field, optionally add a message (body), and OneDrive will email the link to them via your Microsoft account using the Windows 11 Mail app. You can also configure permissions as noted below.

Or, you can select the “Share this link to More apps” button—it’s identified only as “…”—to display the normal Windows 11 Share window, which lets you share the link via other compatible apps or Nearby sharing.

Copy link. This choice will create the link and then display it for you so that you can copy it to the Clipboard and share it however you prefer. This is a good choice if you use a web-based email app like Gmail instead of the Windows 11 Mail app: just create a new email and paste it into the message. You can also configure permissions as noted below.

Each of the choices above lets you configure various permissions that will be applied to the OneDrive link that you are sharing. These permissions are displayed in a Link settings window.

Available permissions include:

Who can use the link. By default, anyone who is sent (or comes across) the link can access the file(s) you’re sharing. But you can configure the link so that it only works for specific recipients, which is probably the safer approach.

Other settings. This determines if the recipient can edit the file(s) you’re sharing—the default—or just view them. However, it’s not as dangerous as it sounds: the recipients can edit the file(s) you shared in OneDrive, but those changes will be saved to a copy in their OneDrive and won’t impact the original.

Expiration date. By default, the link will not expire, but you can configure it to have an expiration date, which is not a horrible idea.

Password. By default, the link will not have a password associated with it, but you can create one and send that separately to your recipient(s) so that they can access the shared file(s).

The people who receive the link will access the files using their web browser (after entering the correct password, if you specified that).

The experience will vary somewhat based on the permissions you configured. Anyone who can access the shared items can view each file in the browser and download them. And if you gave them edit permissions, they can edit each file directly in OneDrive, though changes are saved to a copy in their OneDrive.

Protect your most important files with Personal Vault

OneDrive lets you securely store your most important or sensitive documents, photos, and other files in a specially-protected area called Personal Vault. Personal Vault is a top-level folder location in OneDrive, and it is accessible via the web, the OneDrive app on mobile, and via File Explorer in Windows 11. But it differs from other OneDrive folders in that it requires you to verify your identity when you access it.

That verification will be familiar to you if you use, as we recommend, your Microsoft account’s two-step verification protections.

All Microsoft account holders can store 3 files in Personal Vault, but if you have a Microsoft 365 account, there is no file limit.

Enable Personal Vault

To enable Personal Vault in Windows 11, open File Explorer and navigate to your OneDrive using the Navigation pane. There, you will see a Personal Vault shortcut icon—which resembles a safe and not a typical folder—alongside your other top-level OneDrive folders.

Next, try to open Personal Vault as you would any other folder. Windows will prompt you about this feature, explaining how it works.

Select Next, and Windows will prompt to you accept a User Account Control (UAC) permissions dialog. Do so.

After a bit of work, another prompt will appear asking you to sign in to your Microsoft account using a two-step verification request that will be delivered to your phone. Complete that process, and the Personal Vault folder will open in File Explorer.

Access Personal Vault

Once Personal Vault is enabled on your PC, you can use it normally, and like any other folder. That is, you can copy or move files or folders into or out of Personal Vault, delete files or folders in Personal Vault, or perform any other standard file operations.

There is one security-related wrinkle: you will be prompted to verify your identity from time to time. This can happen if you’ve not used Personal Vault in a while. But it can also happen when you have been using Personal Vault, but 20 minutes have elapsed since the last access.

Files copied or moved into Personal Vault can of course be viewed, edited, and deleted from the web or the OneDrive mobile app as well. In both cases, you will be prompted to verify your identity each time.