OneDrive: Overview

OneDrive – A Mobile File Storage Solution

Microsoft's OneDrive is available for SUNY New Paltz faculty, staff, and students at no cost!  

If you've used services like Google Drive or Dropbox - it is a similar sort of cloud storage service.

Your new tool will make it easy to collaborate, manage, and share your documents from anywhere and any device. Use OneDrive as the primary place for secure file storage, syncing, and sharing.

Features focused on the way you work

OneDrive is SUNY New Paltz’s official cloud storage solution and is available to all faculty, staff, and students through our subscription to Microsoft 365. With OneDrive setup you won’t have to jump through hoops to get to your files on the network drives anymore – they will be right at your fingertips: at home, in the classroom, even on your smartphone.

!!!SENSITIVE DATA WARNING!!!

Users should follow our Confidential Information Policy. Any data with Social Security Numbers, passwords, credit card numbers, or other sensitive data should not be stored on OneDrive.

 

Synchronizing files between OneDrive and your computer

Microsoft OneDrive allows you to synchronize files between OneDrive and your computer.  If you make changes to a file that is stored on OneDrive you will have that file on any computer that you have setup the synchronization on.  The reverse is true.  If you create or edit a file in the OneDrive folder on your computer, it will synchronize to OneDrive in the cloud.

Follow these easy steps and you can synchronize your files to OneDrive:

  1. Log in to your Microsoft 365 account and click the AppLauncher (the icon at the very top left)
    Screenshot of Outlook with AppLauncher highlighted
  2. Click OneDrive
  3. You will be brought directly into OneDrive (note: If this is your first time accessing OneDrive, you may need to click Your OneDrive is ready at the bottom of the page that comes up).
  4. To synchronize files between your computer and your OneDrive, click on the Sync icon near the top.
  5. If you already have the OneDrive client installed (it should be preinstalled on Windows 10) you shouldn't need to install anything - skip to step 7.
  6. Once you click on Sync, if you do not already have the OneDrive sync client installed, you can click the "get the latest version of OneDrive" link.  If that is the case, click the link, download, and run the application.
  7. After you install the application, click the "X" at the top right of the "Getting ready to sync" box, and click "Sync" again.  You'll be prompted to setup OneDrive.
  8. Login as you do on other university services like Microsoft 365, my.newpaltz.edu, or Brightspace.
  9. On the next screen, click Next (or optionally, click "Change location" to change where the files are stored on your computer).
  10. You'll be prompted to either "Sync all files and folders in OneDrive - State University of New York at New Paltz" (which is the default) or to select which folders to synchronize.  If you have a computer with a smaller hard drive and a lot of files on your OneDrive, you may not want to synchronize all files.  Click Next when done.

OneDrive will start synchronizing now.  How long it takes depends on how much data you have in your OneDrive, and the speed of your computer and network connection.  Your files will be located in a separate folder labeled "OneDrive - State University of New York at New Paltz" (though the full name may be cut off).  It will look like the following (in the screenshot below - it shows both how your personal OneDrive shows up - as well as any groups you may be synchronizing (see Synchronizing Microsoft 365 Groups to your Computer for more information on that)

Screenshot of OneDrive and Group layout

If you are on a Mac the process is the same but you may need to download the OneDrive client which is available for download for free from Microsoft or on the App Store.

SUNY New Paltz ITS recommends that you only install the client and sync from your office computer. If you need to access One Drive on other computers (classrooms, conference rooms, labs, etc.) you should access the files through the OneDrive web version.

 

Need help? Submit a ticket for OneDrive

 

Explore other resources for OneDrive (from Microsoft and other resources)

Find out more about OneDrive (Microsoft's OneDrive site)

Explore training resources (Microsoft's OneDrive video training)

Learn from OneDrive experts (Microsoft's OneDrive help site)

Learning OneDrive (LinkedIn Learning - available to all New Paltz faculty, staff, and students)

 

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