Once you have your OneDrive folder set up on your computer, you’ll want to start moving files and folders into it to take advantage of OneDrive’s features.
Some of OneDrive’s features include:
- File and folder backups – your files are protected if something happens to your computer
- Easy sharing with others
- Easily revert to previous versions of a file
- Work on Word and Excel documents with others in real-time, with Real-Time Editing.
Moving your Documents Folder
Since most people save their documents to the Documents folder by default, we’ll start moving that folder’s contents first.
Open a File Explorer window and click the Documents folder from the list of folders on the left-hand side, to show all the files and folders inside the Documents folder. Select the files and folders, and drag-and-drop them onto the OneDrive – United States Bakery folder. Dragging and dropping them will move files and folders out of the Documents folder and into the OneDrive folder.
If you keep files on your Desktop, you should move these files and folders to your OneDrive folder, so they can also be backed up and protected in case something happens to your computer. You can use the steps above to do that for the files and folders on your Desktop.
What if you like keeping files on your desktop because they’re easier to find? You can have the best of both worlds–have files protected in OneDrive, but also accessible on the desktop–using shortcuts. First, move all the files to your OneDrive folder, then right-click and drag the files back to your desktop. The right-click-and-drag is important. When you let go, you’ll get the prompt below asking what you want to do with those files.
Select Create shortcuts here. You’ll end up with shortcuts on your desktop that point to the files in your OneDrive folder, making it look as if the files are still saved on your desktop.
Saving files directly to your OneDrive folder
There will be many times when you’re working on a Word document or Excel spreadsheet and you want to save them directly to your OneDrive folder. You can do this from the Save As… screen.
Your OneDrive folder will be one of the choices where you can save documents.
Saving to OneDrive by default
If you want to get really fancy, you can change the default location Microsoft Word uses to save your documents. By default, it’s set to your Documents folder, but you don’t really want that, because you’ll have to manually move those files to your OneDrive folder. Instead, have Word just save to your OneDrive folder automatically.
- Go to the Save/Save as screen and choose Options all the way at the bottom.
- On the left, click Save and then look for the Default local file location, as shown below.
- Change the Default local file location to your OneDrive folder. You can click Browse to search for it.
- Click OK when you’re done.
Now anytime you go to save a document, Word will try to save it OneDrive first. This handy option also works in Excel and PowerPoint.