Hi everyone today I want to show you how you can both get, and also use Microsoft OneDrive what is OneDrive and why use it? and How to use onedrive in windows 10 pc ? and also One drive how to sync and more.
What is OneDrive, why & How to use onedrive in windows 10 pc ?
Well, it's a cloud storage provider. If you've ever used iCloud before or Google Drive before, it's the exact same thing, except it's Microsoft's version of it.
ow what does it mean to store your files in the cloud, I know clouds float overhead but what does it mean to put a file there.
The easiest way to think of it is at home, you have your own computer, and when you put a file or a document in the cloud, you're putting it on Microsoft's computer, and so Microsoft refers to their computers as servers and their servers sit in many different data centers all over the world, but anytime you put a file in the cloud, you're putting it on one of these servers in one of these data centers.
Now you might be thinking, Okay, well why would I ever want to do that.
What are the benefits of putting my files in the cloud?
Well, there are three main benefits you get by putting your files in the cloud.
NO.1 ➜ You can backup your files. So let's say that you have a bunch of files on your laptop, and maybe you lose your laptop or someone steals it, or maybe something happens to it where your hard drive drives, by backing up your files in the cloud, it doesn't matter. You can then retrieve all of your files.
NO.2 ➜ Another benefit is that you can access your files from anywhere so I live here in Seattle I have all my computer, all my files on my computer here in Seattle. Let's say I went on a trip to Europe, and I want to access my files.
Well, it'd be hard to do because my computers at home. So instead what I can do is I can access the cloud that has all my files, and then I can get them from anywhere.
NO.3 ➜ The third benefit is I can also share and collaborate with others on my files. Now what do I mean by that, well in the past when you've worked on a file on your own computer.
If you wanted to share that with someone, typically what you would do is you would email it to someone, they would make some changes and then they would send it back by storing a file in the cloud.
What you could do is you could share a link to that file and you can continue working on that link or on that file view that link and then whoever you share that with can also work on that file so you no longer have to send a file back and forth.
So makes collaboration, a lot easier. Well, if it sounds good and you're interested in using the cloud and you're interested in using OneDrive.
Get Microsoft OneDrive on PC and Mac
First off, I want to show you how we can get OneDrive. So why don't we jump on the PC and I'll show you how you can get started here on PC and to get OneDrive.
If you're using Windows 10, it's very easy because OneDrive comes pre installed on Windows 10, so you don't have to do anything else to get OneDrive, you could simply start taking advantage of it.
If you're on an older version of Windows let's say windows 7 or Windows 8.
Did you know you can upgrade to Windows 10 for free. If you're interested you can go ahead and upgrade to Windows 10, in which case you'll then automatically get OneDrive.
Well let's say that you're on Windows 7 or Windows 8 and for whatever reason you don't want to upgrade to Windows 10, you can still download OneDrive onto your computer and install it, you can go to the following URL and you can simply click on that, not only can you download and install OneDrive onto windows 7 or Windows 8.
You can also install it on Mac as well so it doesn't matter what platform you happen to be on, you can get OneDrive.
Get Microsoft OneDrive on Android or iphone
Next I want to show you how you can get Microsoft OneDrive on your phone, whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone, you can download and install OneDrive. How to use onedrive in windows 10.
Using an iPhone to get the OneDrive app
- Click into the App Store on the iPhone
- Search onedrive and install it.
Using an Android device to get one drive;
- Click into the Play Store one the android
- Search onedrive and install it.
Once you get into the App Store or the Play Store click on the Search icon and once you click on Search simply search for OneDrive.
When you search for OneDrive, you should see the top match appears and it says Microsoft OneDrive. If you already have it installed you can simply click on open. If you don't yet have it installed, go ahead and click on Install and then you'll have OneDrive on your phone as well.
The nice thing about also installing OneDrive on your phone is you'll be able to access your files from your desktop from anyone else's computer and even from your phone while you're on the go so you truly do get access to your files from anywhere.
How to use onedrive in windows PC
Let's jump back on the PC and I'll show you how we can get started with OneDrive on the PC.
How do we actually start using OneDrive & what we do next?
Well, once you're on Windows 10 or Once you've installed one drive back in the bottom right-hand corner.
You should now see a cloud icon appear. This is the OneDrive icon. When I hover over the icon. It also gives me an update as to what the current status is it looks like everything is currently up to date. But let me go ahead and click on this icon and see what I can do with OneDrive.
So first off, one of the things that I see is up here at the top of this dialog that appeared, I see that OneDrive is all up to date. Let's say that I just loaded a whole bunch of new pictures or documents onto my computer.
It'll show me the current status and it would tell me that it's currently updating but it's good to see that everything is currently up to date.
Onedrive how to sync that I see all the files that have recently synced on my computer, I have a whole bunch of JPEGs and also, here's an MKV file that I recently synced with OneDrive.
Now with all these files that recently synced if I click on the ellipses over on the right-hand side, this exposes a few different actions that I could take on this file for instance I could open it to see what it is. I could share it with others I could view it online and I could look at version history, we'll get into more of these actions shortly but I just wanted to show that four files that have recently synced or Microsoft Onedrive sync, you can take various actions on them.
At the very bottom of the OneDrive app, there are three different actions that you can take, I can open the folder I can view online and I can go into help and settings.
Now we're going to go through each one one by one and I'll show you exactly what they do onedrive how to sync.
Using OneDrive in windows File explorer on PC
How to use onedrive in windows 10 pc - Let's start off by clicking on open folder in File Explorer and file explorer shows me all the different folders and files that I have on my computer here up in the top left I now see a folder for OneDrive how to sync.
When I click in this, this shows me all the different folders and all the different files, I have in the cloud, and once again when I put a folder or a file in the cloud, it backs it up, I can access it from anywhere and I can also collaborate with others on these files. I want to take a moment to talk about what we see here in this view.
Different Status icons
Now first off, you might notice something that's a little different from the typical File Explorer view. and we now have a column here called status.
I want to quickly walk through what these different icons mean, if you ever wonder what these icons mean and you forget what these icons stand for you can simply hover over and that'll tell you what the icon means now you have a few different icons here.
Here's an example of a green circle with a checkmark. What that means is this file is on my computer and it's also in the cloud, OneDrive does the magic work of making sure that the file stays in sync so the version that I have on my computer is the same version as what's in the cloud.
Now some of these files here the Apple Watch animations, there's a cloud icon, and this indicates that the file is currently in the cloud and I don't have a copy on my computer and you might be wondering well can I still open that file and here's a document that is on the cloud, it's not on my computer.
If I click on this file. It'll download the file very quickly and then open it in this case it was just a blank document, you have a few other icons as well.
Here I see a person icon and what this indicates is that I'm currently sharing this folder with others. So it's a quick way to see, have I shared this with other people. And then there's another file down here called book one and it has a sync icon, and that means that OneDrive is currently sinking the file between my computer and on the cloud. I want to show you some of the actions that you can take when you have a file or a folder in OneDrive.
So I'm going to right-click on this file called amazing presentation. When I right-click on it. This opens up the context menu, and in Windows you can typically do things like open the file you can rename you can delete, but I now have the addition of five new actions as well, since I'm using OneDrive.
We're gonna run through these and I'll show you what you can do with these now the first action is share. If I go ahead and click on this. This opens up the share dialog. Now at the beginning I said one of the benefits of using OneDrive is that you can very easily share and collaborate with others on files.
Now here what I could do is I could send a link to someone else here right now it says anyone with the link can edit if I click on this, I have a few different controls I could allow someone else to edit the file with me or I could turn off editing, in which case they can view the file but they won't be able to edit with a paid subscription to Microsoft 365, you also have some additional options for instance I could set an expiration date so maybe I only want someone to be able to edit it for the next two days, and then I'll lock the file, and let's say you share something that's confidential you could set a password and others will have to enter the password to be able to open the file.
I'm going to jump back to the share control here, and within here I can type in a name or an email address to share it with someone and then I can click on Send or alternatively I can also copy a link to this file and then I can share it through some other way, let's say in WhatsApp or maybe on Facebook, so I could share my document or my content.
View files online
That way back on the main screen I'm going to go ahead and let's right-click on the file again to pull up the context menu. One of the other options I have here too if it's a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file I can view it online.
I'll go ahead and click on that and this will open the presentation in PowerPoint online, PowerPoint, on the web is entirely free to use. So you can very quickly get in and edit your files, through the web.
Onedrive Version history
Back within File Explorer, I'm going to right-click on the file again by storing your files on OneDrive.
You also can take advantage of version history, I'll go ahead and click on this, this file doesn't have much history, but imagine that you're working with others on a file and someone makes some drastic edits that maybe you don't agree with and you want to go back to an earlier version, you could very easily do that, you could click on the ellipses and you can restore that version of the file.
Onedrive how to sync, Keep file on cloud only device and cloud
How to use onedrive in windows 10 - Let's click on the file again once again This opens up the context menu and I have two more options here. One of these is always keep on this device. Let's say that you're going on a trip or you're going to be on a plane and you won't have internet and you want the file to also be synced on your computer, you can go ahead and always keep a copy on your computer.
Onedrive how to sync you also have the alternate or the inverse of that or you can also make sure the file stays in the cloud and you don't keep a copy on your computer, in which case you're going to free up some space on my YouTube channel I have all my videos and I store them in OneDrive, but I don't want them taking up space on my hard drive. So for all my video files, I always choose to free up space.
One drive sync, Access your files from anywhere via the web
Here we're in File Explorer and you see all your files you might be wondering well hey what if I'm out and about and I want to access these files elsewhere.
Well, earlier I said you can get OneDrive on your mobile phone and I'll show you in a moment how you can use OneDrive on your phone. But one thing you can also do is if you open up your browser you can navigate to onedrive.com and sign in, and that'll also give you access to all of these files, now that we've looked at what the Folder View looks like let's go back to the bottom right-hand corner and we're going to click on the OneDrive icon again. so we've looked at what you can do within the file explorer, or the Open Folder View.
The next thing I want to do is let's see what you can do online and I'm going to go ahead and let's click on View Online by clicking on View Online This opens up the OneDrive website.
And here I have a similar view to what I had on my desktop at this shows me everything now that's stored in the cloud. So up here we're going to start from the top of the page and we're going to work our way down.
Search sync File with onedrive
Microsoft has a very powerful search where I can find any files that I've put in the cloud. So I'm just going to click on this and do an example.
I recently did a post on how to highlight your mouse cursor which you see here and I always save my video files in OneDrive, to have a backup outside of YouTube. So when I type in cursor here I see my cursor highlight or dot mp4 file.
So it's a very quick way to search across all the different files you have stored on OneDrive.
Create new Word, Powerpoint and Excel files
Next, we dropped by default in the My Files view I want to take a moment to talk about what's within this view, within my files you can create new files so if I click on the new menu here, you can create a new folder I can also create Word, Excel, PowerPoint OneNote forms, and even a plain text document directly from this new menu. This is leveraging the different Microsoft Office Online apps.
Onedrives Sync Upload Content
Along with creating new I can also upload content so let's say I have an additional files or folders that I want to put on OneDrive and I'm not going to simply sync them on my computer, I can come directly to OneDrive.
And then I can upload them here. If I upload a file to OneDrive from here if I go to the File Explorer view. I'll also see that same file show up within File Explorer. The nice thing is anything you do on your PC within the OneDrive folder anything you do on OneDrive on the web, those files will be automatically synced between the two of them.
Onedrives Sorting
one drive how to sync So you truly do have anywhere access within the My Files view I want to walk through some of the functionality here so over on the right-hand side you have some additional ways to sort the view similar to file explorer you can store things by name when you last modified it big to small via size so you have lots of different ways you can store it, along with sorting.
Onedrive File and Folder visualization
You can also visualize the files in different ways so let's say you want to see a compact list.
Or maybe you prefer seeing the tiles view, you can alter the view based on what you feel most comfortable with.
Onedrive Activity view
And then over on the far right-hand corner, you have a circle with an eye in it if I click on that. What this will do is it brings up an activity view so I can see all the activity that's occurred within my OneDrive and on various files.
So you have all these different controls and visualizing checking your activity, down below. Once again I see all of my folders, just like they appeared within File Explorer but now I could access all of them on the web.
Actions on files & folders on the web
How to use onedrive in windows 10 pc - Just like on the desktop I can also take actions on these files, I'm going to scroll down a little bit again and here's my amazing presentation once again I showed it within File Explorer and this file is also synced in my OneDrive how to sync.
If I right-click on this file this exposes a context menu, and just like File Explorer on the desktop I could take different actions on these files, for instance, I could open the file I could share with others. If I click on a share. This will bring up a similar sharing dialog to what I had on the desktop. I'm going to right-click on it again to pull up the context menu. I also have access to my version history, so very similar actions to what I can do directly within Windows I can also do directly from the web.
OneDrive personal vault
Now there's one additional thing that shows up here and it looks pretty interesting. It looks like a big safe, or a vault. It's called the personal vault.
This is a special folder within OneDrive, where I can put files and this is meant for files that you want to make sure stay very secure to be able to enter the personal vault, you can set up two factor authentication and what that means is, not only do you have to log into OneDrive to access it but then typically you also either have to type in a code on your phone, or you have to get a code via email, and then enter in that code to be able to access the personal vault.
So it's an extra layer of security, to keep things ultra secure so let's say you have a picture of your driver's license or maybe your social security card, rather than just putting it in one of the standard OneDrive folders, the personal vault is a more secure place to keep those types of materials.
Onedrive recent view
Now that we've looked at the My Files view Let's jump over to the left hand side and see what else we can do. There's also a recent view this shows me all the last documents I worked on.
So it gives me a view of recent helping me get back to what matters to me, along with recent I also have a photos view I'm going to go ahead and click in that within photos I see a bunch of photos and hearing you'll see photos of when I was younger and here I can also click into albums I can see photos by plays. And then once again just like with any other view I have different filtering options that I can pull up here and I can also pull up activity.
That's recently happened within my photos view back over on the left hand side, I'm going to click on the hamburger menu. I can also see files that I have shared with others.
Here are a bunch of files that I've shared with other people over time.
Onedrive Recycle bin
Lastly How to use onedrive in windows 10 recycle bin, I'm going to click on the recycle bin. Here I can see items that maybe I deleted and I want to retrieve them again they'll stay in the recycle bin for a certain amount of time before they're deleted permanently. But this gives me the opportunity to retrieve files if I deleted it erroneously.
Now that we've looked at the web interface. Let's go back to the OneDrive icon down here in the bottom right-hand corner. I'm going to click on this again. And the last one I want to click into is the one titled help and settings within this it opens up a menu with different options.
Onedrive sync settings
I'm going to click into the one that says settings within settings there are a few things that are interesting and I'm going to click on the Settings tab at the top. one of them is you can have OneDrive automatically start when you start windows, I have this turned on.
And this way if I create any files I will always ensure that it's always synced with the cloud, down below there's another option that says save space and download files as you use them. What this means is that if I create a file, rather than keeping it on my computer and taking up space. Instead I can make it be only on one drive.
When I interact with that file it'll download a copy, but once I'm done with it, it'll make sure the file is in the cloud. This helps me save a little bit of space on my computer and this way. I know that Microsoft is backing it up and keeping it available for me when I need it in the future. Next I want to click into the account pivot at the top.
And one of the things I want to call out here is you are able to choose the folders that Microsoft OneDrive is going to sync so if I click on choose folders here I can define what folders are going to be synced I currently have every folder within my OneDrive folder, being synced.
Next, there's another pivot called backup let's go ahead and click on that, here what I can do is I can define that one drive backup important folder so let's say things that you have in your desktop your documents folder or your pictures folder. If you click on Manage backup
Onedrive Photo view
It'll also Onedrive sync how to sync those, along with your OneDrive folder.
And then next you also have the option when let's say you load pictures into your computer, you could set it up so OneDrive automatically imports those new pictures or videos directly to your OneDrive.
How to use onedrive on Android & iphone
We've talked about how you can use OneDrive on your PC and also via the web, but right now I want to show you how you can also use OneDrive.
Once you install it on the phone. And so I have OneDrive opened right on the side of me and I want to show some of the capabilities here.
So here I am in the main OneDrive view when you open the app for the first time you'll fall here and here too I see my files view with all the files that we saw on the desktop and all the files that I saw on the web.
Similar to on the web and on the desktop I could also see all of my recent files so once again I clicked on recent and this is my recent list. If I go over on the right on the bottom.
I can click to view all of the files that I have shared with others and once again this is also similar to the view that I saw on the web. And then lastly, if I click on photos. This will show me all of my recent photos that I took on my phone.
Take photos or Scan image on OneDrive app
Now one of the very nice things about the OneDrive app on your phone is that you can also capture content so in the bottom middle there's a photo icon and if I click on that and that opens up the photo tool now what I can do is I can take pictures of documents I can take pictures of whiteboards, it does a very nice job capturing content.
I can also click on the plus button in the top right-hand corner and that also opens up a menu where I can scan documents I can upload documents I can take a photo or video. I can also create Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents directly from the OneDrive app so it has quite a bit of power. And one of the things I also want to show is not only can you capture content.
How to edit PDFs on OneDrive app
You can also editing PDFs directly on the phone and the OneDrive app has some awesome PDF editing capabilities. I'm going to scroll down here to a file that I created and it is called my modeling contract Yes, I'm trying to get a modeling deal so let's open that up just kidding I'm really not just for an example here, but if I open up this PDF file the OneDrive app has some pretty awesome annotation tools, you'll see up in the top left hand corner. I'm going to click on the pin icon. And here what I can do now is I can draw on the PDF.
So let's say I just want to write some content I can do that. Let's say I want to insert a text box here I can type in text. I can also associate notes with this OneDrive file.
So, one of the really cool things is the OneDrive app is a pretty feature rich PDF editor on your phone as well, along with inserting text or writing something or annotating if I click on the ellipses in the top right-hand corner I could also insert shapes.
I could insert a signature I can insert images or I could insert the date. So once again the OneDrive app gives some awesome PDF editing capabilities, and once I'm done with all of my changes I click in the top left hand corner on Dun, and that'll save my PDF with all of the edits.
OneDrive plans for more storage & Capacity
The last thing How to use onedrive storage & Capacity in windows 10 I want to touch on is let's say that OneDrive looks pretty compelling and you're interested in getting it.
How can you actually get OneDrive and how much space Do you get well over here on the right-hand side, if you sign up for a free OneDrive account, you get five gigabytes of storage entirely for free.
And that's about it and five gigabytes won't get you that far. If you simply want to pay for a little bit more space you can do that and for $2 a month, you can get 100 gigabytes.
Now OneDrive also offers additional space, if you would like it where you can upgrade beyond 100 gigabytes, but that's typically a pretty good place to start.
Now over on the left hand side there are two different plans, and this is the Microsoft 365 plan they have a personal plan which is intended for one person, or you have a family plan that you could use with up to six people, and with a personal plan you get one terabyte of space with a family plan you get six terabytes of space, which is probably more than enough space than you'd ever need I backup all of my videos that I make on YouTube onto OneDrive and I think I'm only right now at about 590 gigabytes.
So even with tons and tons probably 200 something videos I'm still well under the one terabyte limit. Now one of the nice things is not only do you get storage space in the cloud.
You also get the various Office apps so you get outlook Word, Excel, PowerPoint, so you get a lot above and beyond just the storage space, so the value truly is good and you get a lot for that amount. All right.
Well that was a quick look at how you can get Microsoft OneDrive on your PC and How to use onedrive in windows 10 on the web and also on your phone.
If you now know how to backup your files to the cloud and maybe you even know what the cloud means now.
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Alright, well, thanks for tuning in today and I hope to see you next time. Bye.