Knowing where to save your important documents can be a challenge. Should you save them in My Documents on your computer? That’s a problem if you go from device to device. Maybe they would be better on a USB stick? They tend to go missing, and you’d need one big enough to store all your files. And if you’re working remotely, or travel regularly, neither of these options are great if something goes wrong and you lose your device.
There is another option – cloud storage. And in particular, Microsoft’s OneDrive. The free version of OneDrive gives individuals 5 GB for file storage. But if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you get 1 TB of storage per user included. This should be enough storage space for most users, but there are add-ons for increasing the size of your OneDrive account. Here are five ways you can use OneDrive for remote working.
How to Use OneDrive for Remote Working
1. Access all your files
If you save your files to OneDrive, you can access them from wherever you’re working, and on any device. If your work laptop stops working, and your IT team gives you a new one, simply login to OneDrive on the new device and all your files will be there! Alternatively, you can use Microsoft’s mobile or tablet apps if you prefer.
It’s easy to access your files on OneDrive. You can log in through a browser, or if you’ve signed into your computer with a Microsoft account, you can access OneDrive through the file explorer. It works the same as if you’re accessing files saved to your computer – it has the familiarity you’re used to.
2. Share files and folders
OneDrive is fantastic for saving your personal work files. But there are times when you need to share with colleagues, suppliers or clients. In OneDrive, you can choose how your files are shared. You can share files with individual people, give them read-only access, password protect files and more. To share a file, you can directly share a file with members of your organisation, or send a link to people outside your organisation. They’ll be notified by email.
3. Collaboration
Once your files are shared, collaboration can begin. Thanks to OneDrive, you can say goodbye to the days of having multiple versions of a file because you can’t all be in at the same time. Sharing and collaborating is easy with OneDrive. You can see who is in a document at any time, and the changes other people make show up in different colours, so there’s no confusion over who’s doing what!
4. Easy organisation
OneDrive not only keeps you connected to the files that you work on frequently but also supports intelligent file search and discovery. Features like “Discover View” give you personalised recommendations based on your working relationships. OneDrive also makes it easy to get back to files that you have recently used, files that been shared with you or by you and files that are “popular” or trending around you. This is consistent across OneDrive web, mobile and Office apps making it easy to pick up where you left off across devices and apps.
5. Teams integration
OneDrive integrates perfectly with all apps in the Office suite – none more so than Teams. You can open Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and more directly in Teams, meaning you don’t need to have the individual apps open. When you share files in Teams, you can do so in Chat. Simply click the paperclip icon, choose your file and then you can send and chat about it. For files you use regularly, you can turn them into tabs in a team or conversation.
OneDrive for Remote Work
At ACUTEC we love OneDrive. It’s such a convenient way to store files, and you don’t need to worry about regular backups, as everything saves to the Cloud! If you don’t think you’re making the most of OneDrive, or you’d like to upgrade your storage, get in touch with us today.
