Courtesy of Lynn Dye

I’m a little late to getting and working with Office 365’s Files On Demand feature. As of now (August, 2017), you can get access only  if you are in the Windows Insider’s Program Fast Ring. I got on it a couple weeks ago and the first thing I did was a OneDrive Files on Demand Walk-through. I’d been eager to see not only Files On Demand, but I wanted to try out the new sharing experiences too.

Further down is a 4-minute video walk-through if you’d like to look at that. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel and get notified anytime I post a new video.

Let’s look at the new OneDrive sync icons first

  • Gone are the green check marks on each folder/file. Now they are plain-looking folders. (I miss them.)
  • There are 3 new icons that are visible only when you open Windows Explorer
  • The icons are the same whether you are on OneDrive for Business or OneDrive (consumer).

Online-only files – The cloud icon shows up in Windows Explorer when you select that folder/file. When it’s in this state, it means that particular file/folder hasn’t been opened yet on your computer.

Locally available files – this icon will appear after you open a file/folder and it’ll be available next time without having to have internet access.

Always Available files – you will need to right-click on each file/folder and select ‘always available on this device’. Then you’ll get the solid green filled check mark. You can hold the Ctrl key and multiple-select files!

 

Will All My SharePoint files Sync When First Starting The New Client?

I wondered how the first sync would work and if all the files currently on my computer would still be there, or if I’d need to re-do them.

OneDrive consumer does not have a sync button when logged in the cloud like in Office 365. To check on what what synced, I right-clicked on the white cloud, (on my desktop) went to ‘Settings’, and then checked off what I wanted on my laptop. Clicking in the settings is what starts up the sync process with OneDrive.

With Office 365 and ODFB and SharePoint, I did login online and there is a sync button that I clicked on to check just to see how it worked. It worked as it does now.

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