Migrating from icloud to OneDrive

I read an old article of yours from June 23, 2014, “Tip: Backup All of Your Smart Phone Photos to OneDrive, Windows Phone + iPhone + Android”, which explains how to start using OneDrive instead of iCloud. Given that this article is more than 5 years old and we are now dealing with IPhoneX and iOS13.3, too much has changed. Do you have a new article on how to make this change?

Also, the original article doesn’t explain how to avoid deleting all your photos when you turn off the iCloud upload on your iPhone. I have 5,000+ photos and don’t want to just delete them….Also, do you still recommend OneDrive over iCloud? I have a Microsoft 365 subscription which gives me 1T of storage…so, I’d like to use OneDrive…but I’m afraid of losing all my photos, etc. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, in advance, for all your help.

Conversation 6 comments

  • minke

    17 December, 2019 - 7:01 pm

    <p>Install Google Photos and upload everything for free at High Quality, then consider how you will also get everything onto OneDrive. Google Photos is faster, easier, free, and more reliable in my experience.</p>

    • BigM72

      18 December, 2019 - 12:55 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#499259">In reply to Minke:</a></em></blockquote><p>I use Google Photos on day-to-day basis, using the free unlimited high quality option.</p><p>Benefit of OneDrive's 1TB storage is that I can store them at full quality (more for archival purpose).</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      18 December, 2019 - 7:42 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#499259">In reply to Minke:</a></em></blockquote><p>My phone and camera are both of better higher resolution than what Google considers "high quality", so it de-reses the photos and stores them at a lower quality. It also ignores RAW files.</p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        18 December, 2019 - 8:01 am

        It only does that if you choose that. You can also choose full quality and pay for storage if that’s an issue.

  • Bats

    17 December, 2019 - 8:43 pm

    <p>Whether it's an article is 5 years old or 10 years old, do you really need instructions on how to switch from iCloud to Onedrive? </p>

  • anoldamigauser

    Premium Member
    17 December, 2019 - 10:35 pm

    <p>Add the iCloud app from the Windows Store on your desktop. This will allow you to access your iCloud storage from Windows Explorer, just like OneDrive. You can then copy the files from iCloud to OneDrive via your computer. Obviously this works best if you have a large hard drive. Once the files are in OneDrive, you can choose to keep them only in the cloud.</p><p>On your iPhone, install the OneDrive app, and set it to upload photos and videos. Then on your phone, change your iCloud settings to not backup photos. I did this when I switched to an iPhone, and I have yet to have to get more iCloud storage. You can also add Google Photos, which works fine for photos up to 12MP. I choose not to give Google any more information about myself than possible, but that is my paranoia.</p>

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