Microsoft Talks Up Coming OneDrive Updates

Microsoft Talks Up Coming OneDrive Updates

Microsoft announced several coming new features for OneDrive at its SharePoint Conference North America on Monday. And while most are business-focused, at least one of them will impact OneDrive for consumers as well.

Don’t look any of these updates quite yet, however: As Microsoft’s Stephen Rose notes, they are rolling out over the next few months.

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Parsing through the list of coming updates, I only see one that I believe will impact individuals using OneDrive for consumers: Microsoft is improving the mobile app’s built-in scan experience. It will easier to find by adding a dedicated icon in the tab bar. And you will soon be able to add multiple pages, annotate, and change the file name or destination folder directly from within the capture experience.

But one of the OneDrive for Business features, called Known folder move, looks particularly interesting: This feature will allow administrators to move known folders—like Documents, Desktop, and Pictures—from their PC to OneDrive during initial account configuration and during post-deployment migration.

If you’re familiar with how this works in consumer OneDrive, you know that you can configure OneDrive to provide Documents, Desktop, and Pictures folder locations (instead of the normal, local PC-only folder locations). But what you can’t do, from the Settings UI at least, is move those folder locations. I’m not sure if the addition of Known folder move to OneDrive for Business means that this feature is coming to OneDrive for consumers, but it’d be nice.

You can see the complete list of coming OneDrive (mostly OneDrive for Business) changes here. And if you’re curious about availability timing, check out Microsoft’s Office 365 Roadmap page.

 

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Conversation 18 comments

  • Kevin Costa

    22 May, 2018 - 9:42 am

    <p>The scan button on the Android app is buggy, it doesn't open the feature when I tap on it. After many tries, the menu changes style and then it works. Glad this changes are coming.</p>

  • gregsedwards

    Premium Member
    22 May, 2018 - 9:58 am

    <p>I already move my Documents and Pictures to OneDrive using the Windows 10 desktop app, but I have reservations about the Desktop folder, which I frequently use as a "work-in-progress" space. A few desktop apps I use don't play nicely with network storage, and when I've manually configured working folders to sync with OneDrive in the past, it's created havoc with files either being locked and unavailable for extended periods, duplicated repeatedly, or just general degraded app performance. For those reasons, I generally don't recommend syncing the Desktop to OneDrive. I'll give it another try when the update rolls out, but I'm not holding my breath.</p>

    • Daekar

      22 May, 2018 - 10:12 am

      <blockquote><a href="#278025"><em>In reply to gregsedwards:</em></a></blockquote><p>I have the same kind of issues. If the desktop and other locations are always cloud-synced then they cease to be useful scratch space. I don't need to be syncing big ISO files or application installation executables or what have you. If it needs to be synced I put it precisely where it belongs in my OneDrive folder structure and work from there if practical.</p>

      • peterh_oz

        23 May, 2018 - 9:34 am

        <blockquote><a href="#278027"><em>In reply to Daekar:</em></a></blockquote><p>Cloud access is great for small or medium sized files, but depending on your upload speed of course you might want to limit the size of them. Torrents are another one you't want to keep away from cloud syncing at least until they're completely downloaded. Using c:torrents achieves this. Legal torrents of course! Same with single view podcasts. I only want to download them once, not then upload them only to be deleted after viewing.</p>

    • Belralph

      24 May, 2018 - 1:07 am

      <blockquote><a href="#278025"><em>In reply to gregsedwards:</em></a></blockquote><p>I have the same experience with dropbox so it might be a windows 10 issue. I don't use my desktop as my main file storage but have a fair amount of WIP files and folders. I have odd issues where all my icons would have a light grey "X" on them, though they work fine. This would come/go, Random errors about files being unavailable. There are times when I save a new file to the desktop but it doesn't show up. If i navigate to the desktop folder in file explorer, the file is there. </p><p>I ended up moving my desktop folder to a second drive but not in my dropbox folder. I format my system a lot so I don't keep my user files on my c: drive. </p>

  • TFinch

    22 May, 2018 - 10:10 am

    <p>Still waiting on my #1 requested feature: differential (block-level) sync. It used to be on the 2017 roadmap…perhaps hope dies last?</p>

    • Daekar

      22 May, 2018 - 10:13 am

      <blockquote><a href="#278026"><em>In reply to TFinch:</em></a></blockquote><p>Would LOVE to see that. Annoys the snot out of me to edit an mp3 tag and watch it upload the ENTIRE file again.</p>

  • compunut

    Premium Member
    22 May, 2018 - 11:03 am

    <p>Auto upload of photos to OneDrive for Business is on the list… FINALLY. I have been asking for this since auto upload of photos for consumers came out. The folder redirection features for business look interesting as well, and I would love to see them for consumers.</p>

  • Curtmcgirt

    22 May, 2018 - 1:51 pm

    <p>what do you mean by "move those folder locations"? can't I just right-click the Documents folder under This PC, choose properties, choose the location tab, and move documents to d:/onedrive/documents, where my onedrive documents folder lives? or redirect documents to any fodler of any cloud storage provider this way?</p>

  • Lauren Glenn

    22 May, 2018 - 2:33 pm

    <p>Their excuse for not having more than 1TB annoys me though. The fact they say they have to retain data &gt; your allotment if you cancel seems odd that no one else has this problem. Amazon has 20TB as does Google.</p><p><br></p><p>Dropbox and OneDrive are just making excuses why they don't allow &gt; 1TB plans (except Dropbox with whatever their business plan licenses are — $45 min? NO thx). For me, I have to have my Synology link one folder to Dropbox and the other to OneDrive so I can have 2TB. Most important files go on Dropbox, slightly less important files go on OneDrive. </p><p><br></p><p>It shouldn't be this difficult… seriously.</p>

  • robsanders247

    Premium Member
    22 May, 2018 - 2:51 pm

    <p>From my experience with the OneDrive client (under the Office Pro Plus Insider Channel), “protecting” the Documents, Pictures and Desktop folders works quite well and moves all files. The behavior is definitely different from a fresh Windows 10 1803 install, as the contents are moved to OneDrive. If I break the protection, all I have in my local folders is a link to the folders in OneDrive. Currently only works for the consumer OneDrive, not seeing this option for my OneDrive for Business account on a different machine with the same configuration. </p>

  • robsanders247

    Premium Member
    22 May, 2018 - 2:57 pm

    <p>One of the new capabilities is one that I hear very often being raised by customers: selecting team/departmental folders in SharePoint Online to be always synced locally. For example, customers with a field sales team or retail locations want all their team members to get the latest price lists automatically, without depending on their staff going online and downloading the files. A similar requirement has been raised by airlines, who must make sure that the latest plane manuals are on board.</p>

  • Patrick3D

    22 May, 2018 - 2:58 pm

    <p>Hopefully the known folder move change will fix problems with OneDrive errors regarding: "'c:usersxyzOneDrive…' is not your original OneDrive folder, Try Again or Setup OneDrive". We run into this error with every feature update.</p>

  • peterh_oz

    23 May, 2018 - 9:27 am

    <p>I already move my folders to onedrive (consumer) but it'd be great to have this asked during initial setup and then just happen, with a one stop settings option to do it later. I move all my folders: desktop, music, videos, documents, downloads , pictures and even the never used 3D objects. Tho with desktop I have a custom name for each PC so their desktops are available but remain separated.</p>

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    24 May, 2018 - 1:59 am

    <p><br></p><p>I appreciated the one who told me the site Emini S&amp;P Trading Secret, you are right they’ve been extremely useful to me in figuring out how to trade and It’s not hard you will need only to gain the correct spot.</p>

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