OneDrive QuickStart guide for

small businesses
09/19/2019 • 12 minutes to read •
In this article
Getting started with OneDrive
Key OneDrive features for small businesses
Adopt OneDrive
Install and set up OneDrive apps
Install and configure OneDrive on a mobile device
Manage OneDrive
Get help with OneDrive

OneDrive for Business is a robust but simple-to-use cloud storage platform for small
businesses, enterprises, and everything in between. Unlike other cloud storage providers,
most of the advanced enterprise-focused features in OneDrive are available for every
subscription type, enabling organizations to use OneDrive in whatever way benefits them
the most. This guide focuses on the deployment and configuration options that make the
most sense for small businesses looking to use OneDrive. From there, these organizations
can select whatever additional management capabilities they require. For the full
deployment guide, which contains other methods of deploying, configuring, and managing
OneDrive, see OneDrive guide for enterprises.

Getting started with OneDrive

OneDrive is effective in even the largest enterprises, but it still has a small, easy-to-
implement footprint that small businesses can take advantage of. After all, small businesses
are often at highest risk for losing files on failed devices because few are concerned with
centralized storage and backups. By using OneDrive, however, your small business can
keep files safe, and your users can easily access them from all their devices.

To get started with OneDrive, follow these steps:

1. Review basic OneDrive information. Start by reviewing the introductory OneDrive

information available at the OneDrive help center. You’ll get answers to many of your
 questions, including the OneDrive experience and how it works.

2. Set up a Microsoft Office 365 subscription. You must set up an Office 365

subscription to use OneDrive, but you aren’t required to purchase all the applications
in the Office 365 suite. To get started, follow the steps in Set up Office 365 for
business.

3. Add OneDrive licenses. Review your plan options in Compare OneDrive for Business
plans, and then add the licenses you need.

When you’ve completed these tasks, you’re ready to plan for, deploy, and configure the
OneDrive sync app and applications. To do that, complete these three simple steps:

1. Plan for adoption. For small businesses, planning for user adoption can be as simple
as individually showing your users how to use OneDrive. Often, small business
customers don’t consider this step for new applications, and that can negatively affect
the application’s success. The section Adopt OneDrive provides helpful resources for
OneDrive adoption.

2. Install and configure. Sync app are available for the Windows and macOS operating
systems that provide a seamless experience for users interacting with their files. Most
small businesses start by installing the sync app on their users’ devices, and then
consider the OneDrive mobile apps later. In fact, you may already have the OneDrive
client on your devices. Devices running the Windows 10 operating system and devices
running Windows or macOS with Microsoft Office 2016 or later will have the
OneDrive sync app already. For information about how to install and configure the
OneDrive sync app and mobile apps, see the section Install and configure OneDrive.

3. Manage OneDrive. For many small businesses, managing OneDrive is optional. You
could simply install and configure OneDrive and leave it at that. If you want to use
advanced features of OneDrive or add device sharing or access restrictions, however,
you can easily manage those and other settings in the OneDrive admin center. For
more information about managing OneDrive, see the section Manage OneDrive.

Key OneDrive features for small businesses

Unlike most other cloud storage providers, OneDrive not only provides robust features to
small businesses out of the box, but it also makes most of its advanced features available
to them. This gives small businesses the flexibility to use advanced features based on the
needs of their organization.
The features listed in this section address common customer concerns or specific
compliance requirements, or provide unique functionality available only in OneDrive. For a
full list of features available across OneDrive plans, see Microsoft OneDrive.

７ Note

The information in this section is for awareness purposes only and is not required to
install and use OneDrive.

OneDrive Files On-Demand

OneDrive Files On-Demand enables users to view, search for, and interact with files stored
in OneDrive from within File Explorer, without downloading all the files to their device. The
feature provides a seamless look and feel for both OneDrive and local files without taking
up space on the local hard drive. As shown in the following screenshot, files that have not
been downloaded have a cloud icon for their status. For those files that have been
downloaded, the status shows a green checkmark.

By default, files are downloaded only when you need to access them. However, if you plan
to access a file while disconnected from the internet, simply make the file available offline
by right-clicking it, and then selecting Always keep on this device. Alternatively, if you
want to free space on your device and remove the downloaded copy of a file, right-click
the file, and then select Free up space. The following screenshot shows the right-click
menu for OneDrive files on a device running Windows.
For more information about OneDrive Files On-Demand, see Learn about OneDrive Files
On-Demand.

Modern attachments

OneDrive integrates with Microsoft Outlook to enable easy sharing of OneDrive files that
appear just like email attachments. This feature provides a familiar sharing experience but
centralizes storage of attachments in OneDrive. This allows your users to all collaborate on
the same file instead of sending different versions bach and forth in email. In addition, you
can configure sharing permissions on the files directly from within the Outlook client.
To reduce the potential for confusion when users choose to add a copy versus a link to
attached OneDrive files, you can set the default behavior of the Outlook client, as
demonstrated in How to control default attachment state when you attach a cloud file in
Outlook 2016.

Files Restore

The OneDrive Files Restore feature lets users restore files to any point over the past
30 days. To select the desired recovery time, OneDrive presents you with a histogram that
shows file activity so that you can determine which recovered time meets your needs. From
there, simply select the file history entry to which you want to restore, and all changes after
that point will be rolled back.
In addition, because the histogram shows individual activity on a file, you can use this
feature to quickly view your files’ modification history. For more information about this
feature, see Restore your OneDrive.

Recycle bin

OneDrive has a recycle bin similar to the one available on the Windows desktop. Deleted
files are moved to the recycle bin and kept for a designated time before being permanently
deleted. For work or school accounts, deleted files are purged after 93 days unless
configured otherwise. For a demonstration of how the recycle bin works, see Restore
deleted files or folders in OneDrive.

Known Folder Move

Known Folder Move enables users to select Windows known folders, such as their desktop,
Documents, or Pictures, to automatically synchronize to OneDrive. You can add this feature
during the initial setup of OneDrive or after it has been configured. This capability provides
a simple migration option for users looking to add known folders to their existing list of
synchronized folders. For more information about Known Folder Move, see Protect your
files by saving them to OneDrive.

Adopt OneDrive
User adoption is important to the overall success of any new application. Ideally, to feel
that you have maximized your investment in Office 365 and OneDrive, you need to
maximize user engagement with them. For small businesses, driving user adoption can be
as simple as introducing users to OneDrive when you’re installing it or showing them any
of the videos available at the Office 365 Training Center.

Personally showing your users how to save and share documents in OneDrive tends to be
the most effective option for driving adoption, given that you’ll likely be performing
manual installations. The primary value proposition for small businesses is file availability
and redundancy. A document saved on local storage can be lost with a device; a document
saved to OneDrive cannot. Simply having this discussion with your users beforehand,
coupled with demonstrating the application’s ease of use, can drive positive outcomes for
this effort.

For information about a more formal Microsoft 365 user adoption strategy, see the
Microsoft 365 End User Adoption Guide . For more information about driving user
engagement through a similar, more formal process, see Success Factors for Office 365 End
User Engagement . You can also contribute to or comment on adoption-related ideas in
the Driving Adoption Tech Community.

Install and set up OneDrive apps

You can upload, download, and interact with your OneDrive files from a web browser, but
the ideal OneDrive experience comes from the Windows and Mac sync apps and the iOS
and Android mobile apps. With these clients and apps, saving files to OneDrive and
interacting with them is much easier than visiting a website each time you need something.
Through this experience, you can seamlessly integrate OneDrive into your existing file
interaction experiences.

You can install OneDrive on any supported device. For small businesses, manual
installations typically make the most sense. For some devices, the installation process may
be as simple as installing an app from the app store. For others, you may need to delete
older versions of OneDrive first. This section walks you through the installation and
configuration of OneDrive on iOS and Android mobile devices, Windows devices, and
computers running macOS. You may not need to install OneDrive on all these platforms,
depending on the devices used in your organization.

Most small businesses start by installing the OneDrive sync app on users’ Windows and
macOS devices, and then consider the OneDrive mobile apps afterwards. You don’t need to
install and configure OneDrive on all your devices before you start using it.

Install and configure the sync app on a Windows device

If your Windows device has either Office 2016 or Windows 10, it already has the OneDrive
sync app.

For devices running older versions of Windows or on which Office 2016 is not installed, you
can download the OneDrive sync app for Windows from
https://onedrive.live.com/about/download.

７ Note

If the device has an older version of the sync app, you’ll be asked to uninstall it when
you install the new one.

Configuring OneDrive for Windows is simple, but if you want to see a demonstration, see
Sync files with the OneDrive sync app in Windows

Install and configure OneDrive on a macOS device

To install the OneDrive sync app on a computer running macOS, just follow the steps in
Sync files with the OneDrive sync app on Mac OS X. The setup experience is similar to that
for Windows. For more information about OneDrive on macOS, see OneDrive for Mac –
FAQ.

Install and configure OneDrive on a mobile device

Installing the OneDrive app on a mobile device is simple: download the app from the app
store on any Android, iOS, or Windows mobile device. If you want to simplify the manual
installation process even further, go to https://onedrive.live.com/about/download and
enter the mobile phone number of the device on which you want to install OneDrive.
Microsoft will send a text message to the mobile device with a link to the app in the
device’s app store. Once installed, start the configuration process by opening the app and
responding to the prompts.

To learn how to perform tasks in OneDrive on an iOS device, see Use OneDrive on iOS.

FTo learn how to perform tasks in OneDrive on an iOS device, see Use OneDrive for
Android.

Manage OneDrive
Many small businesses use OneDrive without changing any of the options.

If you want to add some basic device and sharing restrictions to OneDrive, you can use the
OneDrive admin center. To access the new OneDrive admin center, go to
https://admin.onedrive.com. There, you can restrict the people with whom your users can
share files, choose the devices your employees can use to access OneDrive, and more.


Settings in the OneDrive admin center are grouped into six categories:

Sharing. On the Sharing page, you can configure the default sharing link users send
out to colleagues to share a file. For example, when users share a file, you can specify
that the default sharing type is Internal.

You can also change the external sharing settings to prevent users from sharing files
with people outside your organization. This is useful if you have a lot of confidential
information.
Sync. On the Sync page, you can configure sync restrictions based on file type,
require that synced devices be joined to your domain, or restrict synchronization from
computers running macOS.

Storage. On the Storage page, you specify the default OneDrive storage limit for
users within your Office 365 organization. You can also configure how long to keep
data for users whose accounts have been deleted (the maximum value is 10 years).

Device Access. On the Device Access page, you can restrict device access to
OneDrive based on network location and apps that don’t use modern authentication,
among other application management options.

Compliance. The Compliance page provides a centralized list of links to auditing,

data loss prevention (DLP), retention, ediscovery, and alerting capabilities within
Office 365 that are applicable to OneDrive. (Most small businesses won’t use these
options.)

Selecting an item’s link redirects you to the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center,
where you can configure that item. You can create DLP policies from templates that
protect certain types of data, such as Social Security numbers, banking information,
and other financial and medical content. For a walkthrough of how to create DLP
policies in Office 365 and apply them to OneDrive, see Create a DLP policy from a
template.
 Notifications. On the Notifications page, you define when OneDrive owners should
receive notifications about sharing or accessing their data. These settings are helpful
for small businesses that likely don’t have IT staff who can audit this information. For
information about enabling these options, see Turn on external sharing notifications
for OneDrive.

Get help with OneDrive

If you need help with OneDrive, you have many ways to find solutions to common issues or
request help:

Tech community. Find helpful information from other customers in the community
by reviewing the discussions in the OneDrive for Business Tech Community and the
Microsoft OneDrive Blog.

Support documentation. For a list of recent issues in OneDrive and how to resolve
or work around them, see Fixes or workarounds for recent issues in OneDrive. For
getting started info, see Get started with OneDrive, Employee file storage (video
training) and Why use OneDrive to store your docs.

Microsoft Support. If you need help from Microsoft to troubleshoot an issue or

configure or deploy OneDrive, see Contact Microsoft.

OneDrive UserVoice. You can review and submit feature requests and provide
feature feedback at OneDrive UserVoice.

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