I have a general question about how Onedrive works in the background. I am trying to get my family to save everything to the Onedrive. They are so use to going to the documents folder and saving. I know that you do not have the option to sync specific file folders. It is frustrating that you have to save the file in two separate locations for it to save to my local hdd and to my Onedrive. My thought/idea was to delete the preset folders in the user folder i.e. Documents, Pictures, Videos, and ect. Then recreate the same folders on my Onedrive and then copy shortcuts back to the user folder. This will ensure that even if my family forgets to save it to the Onedrive it will automatically goes there.
- When you save to the Onedrive is that a physical copy that is saved on your machine i.e. HDD?
- Does any one suggest a workflow that will allow my files on my computer to be identical to my Onedrive?
Thanks again for any suggestions!
Yes, the OneDrive folder is physically on your hard drive. You can browse to it.
Since you're here, I assume you're running Windows 8 or 8.1. If you open up File Explorer, you'll see OneDrive on the left side in the Navigation Pane. if you click on it, it'll open up the OneDrive folder. You shouldn't have to browse to the folder though because in Windows 8 and 8.1, by default, saving documents go to your OneDrive folder automatically unless you changed the behavior.
As long as you are editing the files in the Onedrive folder, it should be synced properly.
Now, if you are dragging files manually to and from the OneDrive folder via the file explorer, it won't necessarily sync right away. It's not as easy as say Dropbox where you treat the Dropbox folder like any other folder.
However, if you open up Internet Explorer (it has to be IE, not Firefox or Chrome) and go to your OneDrive, you can then treat OneDrive as if it's a file explorer view. You can drag files from the file explorer window and drop them on top of IE. That will 100% sync the files to the local folder and to the OneDrive storage in the cloud.
So let's say you have a file in d:\my files\test.txt. You open up OneDrive in IE. Have that in the background. Open up a folder view of d:\my files\. Drag the test.txt from the folder to the IE window and drop it. It will copy to the Onedrive folder. Now, OneDrive in IE is treated like a file explorer window. You can do things like right-click on a file to rename it. You can create folder. etc. etc. Now, if you want to copy that test.txt file to a folder you created in OneDrive (i.e., "hello" folder), you just drag the test.txt file from the folder and drop it on top of the hello folder. Just treat the IE window like any other window.
However, if you must do it the file explorer way, one way to cause a sync event is to create a folder. So copy your files and folders to the OneDrive folder. Then in the Onedrive folder, create a new folder. the creation of the new folder should trigger a sync event (I know, the act of dragging and dropping files in the folder SHOULD cause a sync, but often doesn't).
