Junior Middle Office Officer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2022-07-18T07:45:00Z
Jul 18, 2022
I think it should be more user-friendly with more tutorials on the full scale of the program. I think there is still room for improvement and I am pretty sure they will come up with some more features in the program.
Microsoft OneDrive could improve because it doesn't support backing up .PST files, which are Outlook data files, and email archives. This is a substantial setback when it comes to Microsoft OneDrive. There are times when there are some syncing issues. The resolution of the sync issues could be more user-friendly. When you keep on uploading on Microsoft OneDrive, there are a lot of duplicate files which keep adding. There should be some mechanism to identify the duplicate files, and then clean them up in an automated way. Microsoft OneDrive could check for the duplicate files which are exactly the same and give recommendations in terms of, which one to delete, to allow more free space. A type of cleanup function.
The security is not as flexible as it is with Dropbox, which means that we can't share our OneDrive files. The price is quite high and it should be reduced.
Implementation Specialist - Application Solutions at a music company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2020-09-27T04:10:19Z
Sep 27, 2020
Syncing is one area that can be improved. When you click on sync on the online version, what happens is that it creates a drive on your desktop. Basically, it is like you have the online version directly on your desktop. Syncing has been an issue sometimes when there are huge folders. It might not be a huge folder in terms of space, but when there are a large number of files. When there are a lot of files, that is when the issue arises. For example, say you have a folder that has 200 files. When you sync it to a computer, it takes some time to load. When people start updating stuff in that same folder, it can slow down your computer because it updates you locally as well every time there is a change. That constant syncing can cause performance issues. It works fine if it is a smaller number of folders and files, but whenever there is a large number of files, that has been an issue for sure. They need to really improve on that. That is the biggest weakness of the solution, I would say. Syncing is number one. Another thing is when you delete stuff. You do not get a notification if you delete something online. So for example, if you are the owner of a folder and I have access to that folder and there is a file there and I delete it, it actually goes to your recycle bin. In other words, it goes to the owner's recycle bin. That is fine, but then the owner never gets a notification. So, if you have 10 files and then you notice that one is missing, you do not even know who deleted it or when it got deleted. It is residing in your recycle bin, and you can see that it is there. But you do not even know that you have to look at your recycle bin because you never got a notification. That is really a potentially huge issue with the solution. If you are a team leader and you do not know if someone is deleting your stuff, you might eventually lose something by accident. Another thing is permissions. There is no way to set non-delete permissions. You can be a viewer or an editor. If you are an editor, you can delete files. If you are a viewer, you can not delete files. But there is no option to remove the delete privileges from an editor. I think other companies, like Box and Dropbox, have that feature and they allow you to make it so you can edit but you do not have the ability to delete. You want people to be able to edit without deleting probably most of the time. I think that these are some pretty basic and fundamental things that Microsoft just does not have. But they could do even more with permissions. Just having viewing and editing permission is pretty basic, but even in Box, a person can view and edit, but not download. Or a person can view, edit, and download. The point is that there is more to do than just view and edit. There are many different options and combinations in Box that OneDrive just does not have. It is not so interesting to just have more new features. What is more important is having features that are really necessary and already exist in other competing products. That is something that I think Microsoft should strive for with OneDrive. Microsoft is probably one of the biggest companies in the world. If something like Box or Dropbox has better features than you, then you really need to look at your products and make some revisions.
From my own personal experience, I have a story that tells about how and why the product can be improved and it mostly has to do with customer care. This is about a situation that really caused me great aggravation. I am an independent consultant, so I have OneDrive in my business set up and I pay monthly and it bills monthly. I foolishly let my granddaughter get a robot gaming account under my Microsoft account. Because she is only nine years old and she has autism, she really does not understand what she is doing sometimes. She kept buying points for a game she was playing a lot of and I did not know she was doing it. She would go buy $200 a day in robot points, and then I got on my robots bill and found out what was going on. They would not let me separate the accounts so I could stop the billing. If I canceled the account, I would have to cancel her account, and then she would lose all the things that she had done and accumulated in the game. So I removed the credit card, let that account die out, and then started a new account. I made a new password and all that stuff to start over. When you get a new account, they give you a 30-day free trial. Because I use it and knew I wanted it I already bought PowerPoint in the project and they built that. When the trial came near to the end, they sent me an email saying "your trial is coming to an end" and I called them just to make sure that the PowerPoint purchase was not considered part of the trial that they were talking about because I didn't want to lose anything when I let it lapse. They assured me that everything was good. When the trial came to an end. They removed all the files and I had been working on with a client analyzing their IBR (incremental borrowing rate). So I lost all my trees and they totally removed everything I'd spent hours on. I called and tried to find out what was going on. They spent an hour or two on the phone with me trying to go different ways calling different departments to find out where they might still have the data. Turns out they did not. They lost it. So my caution about the product and trial periods is to be careful. Because I had multiple Microsoft accounts, when the first tech checked and looked it up they thought I had a valid license for the new Microsoft account. They were referring to the old one. There is my lesson learned. Besides that episode, I like working with Microsoft products. But then another thing happened. I had another customer and they wanted me to set up on their desktop. So I created a Microsoft account for them so I could use their client email and their OneDrive and all that stuff in their name. For the life of me, I could not get that removed off my desktop after I had it installed. I had to call Microsoft to try and get it working right again. I could not do a regular delete to get rid of the stuff from the other account. It does not let you delete it. So every time I logged in from scratch, it sent up an error saying I had the wrong password for this account. I just do not need that account anymore and there was no way to get rid of it or regain control of the login. They were terrible for support after COVID hit. I want to write an article on the companies that achieved during COVID and then the companies that used it as an excuse to provide poor customer service. Microsoft would be under that jurisdiction. In the end, I would use it again if it worked and I got my password straight. It works great but with the product, you get the behemoth Microsoft customer support services. I have not contacted them lately, so I do not know if they got it working right. When COVID hit, they just went off the deep end claiming they could not fill support requests. Otherwise, I think Microsoft is pretty good. I can not think of anything that I could make OneDrive better. Besides having different outcomes from these experiences with Microsoft products, I have been happy with them.
IT Analyst at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2020-09-21T06:33:08Z
Sep 21, 2020
In the most recent builds, I think the way OneDrive works has become very confusing. It is constantly cloning the entire machine. You transfer that content over, but it will not send it to your local machine. You activate the one drive cloud, you sign in and you see all your documents in the cloud, but you have to physically move the content back onto the local machine or it remains stored only on the cloud. Working offline is not always an option in that case. It did not seem like it used to be that way. I have noticed that it changed in the last six months to a year. It did not change for the better. Possibly the ability — which might exist now and I just have not been able to find a way to do it — is to completely turn off automated features. Once you are signed in to your Microsoft accounts, you can not get out of OneDrive. You can only pause the backup. It does use a lot of resources because it is constantly syncing everything. You can pause the syncing for between 2 to 24 hours, but it would be kind of nice to just be able to log out of it and use it how you want rather than how it seems to dictate.
Non Medicaid Service Coordinator at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2020-09-21T06:33:00Z
Sep 21, 2020
I'm not sure of any features the solution is missing. For me, for what I need, it works. I don't see room for improvement. The solution has sub-folders, which are visible to various team members. If you want to ensure the information is private, you would need to have a certain level of seniority in the office or administration rights. This would allow you to change its visibility.
Information Security Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2020-08-05T06:59:00Z
Aug 5, 2020
The area that can be improved is to be able to share easily with folks outside the organization and with folks who don't have an account, such as Microsoft Office account. Sometimes, when you send a link, you might have some form of repetition. If you don't know how to share it properly, whoever you are sharing it with will have issues using it. Also, the link that you use to share a document can be made a bit shorter. It doesn't have to be long. Typically, when you want to share a document, it has everything, such as the name of the organization, SharePoint, etc. A short URL will be easier to use, and it will just make life easier, especially because a lot of people are now going mobile. I'm not sure if there's a mobile version of Microsoft OneDrive, similar to Google Drive. If they don't have a mobile app, it would also be nice to have a mobile app because that would help in checking out your documents. It would be easy to check your documents on the go on your phone.
Chief Executive Officer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2020-07-29T07:45:00Z
Jul 29, 2020
I think it's quite easy to use. It's quite complete because I use Google Drive as well, but I think the simple feature is it's similar to Google Drive, except I think it's just integrated to the rest of the Office 365 suite. The file structure insight could be made more flexible like for creating more flexible folders.
IT Officer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Real User
2020-07-20T05:36:56Z
Jul 20, 2020
The online application is quite limited, for this and other Office offerings. The solution is pricey, even though you get a lot of applications with it.
It should be more tailored towards pictures and video content. I have Google Drive purely just to look after my pictures and video because the way they organize videos and pictures is easier, and is a lot easier to retrieve a needle in a haystack. If I want to pick out certain criteria of pictures, Google enables me to do that whereas OneDrive is a bit flaky. I'd like to see more integration with Microsoft Teams. The back end file structure is based on SharePoint. When you open up a file within Teams, it says to open up in SharePoint and I hate SharePoint. I'd like it if I can knowing full well that all my data repository is stored and in the back end on OneDrive and I can just work in conjunction with Microsoft Teams, not SharePoint. SharePoint is useless.
Personal docente at Universidad Politécnica Territorial del Estado Aragua "Federico Brito Figueroa"
Real User
2018-08-07T23:01:00Z
Aug 7, 2018
An online video player would be great, since sometimes you have to download the video to play it. Also, an increase in the capacity of storage in the free version would be nice. Offer more plans in the paid version. It would also be convenient if from OneDrive you could listen to music or audio files that are uploaded to the cloud that include an online multimedia player, which allows the reproduction and visualization of multimedia files in general.
Microsoft OneDrive for Business gives you online storage that works seamlessly with the tools you use every day to create, communicate, and collaborate from your PC/Mac or your iOS, Android, or Windows device.
It takes too long for OneDrive to synchronize various applications, especially when you are saving office data. It also requires too much bandwidth.
The scalability has room for improvement. The annual cost of the solution is expensive and can be improved.
I think it should be more user-friendly with more tutorials on the full scale of the program. I think there is still room for improvement and I am pretty sure they will come up with some more features in the program.
Microsoft OneDrive could improve because it doesn't support backing up .PST files, which are Outlook data files, and email archives. This is a substantial setback when it comes to Microsoft OneDrive. There are times when there are some syncing issues. The resolution of the sync issues could be more user-friendly. When you keep on uploading on Microsoft OneDrive, there are a lot of duplicate files which keep adding. There should be some mechanism to identify the duplicate files, and then clean them up in an automated way. Microsoft OneDrive could check for the duplicate files which are exactly the same and give recommendations in terms of, which one to delete, to allow more free space. A type of cleanup function.
The security is not as flexible as it is with Dropbox, which means that we can't share our OneDrive files. The price is quite high and it should be reduced.
Syncing is one area that can be improved. When you click on sync on the online version, what happens is that it creates a drive on your desktop. Basically, it is like you have the online version directly on your desktop. Syncing has been an issue sometimes when there are huge folders. It might not be a huge folder in terms of space, but when there are a large number of files. When there are a lot of files, that is when the issue arises. For example, say you have a folder that has 200 files. When you sync it to a computer, it takes some time to load. When people start updating stuff in that same folder, it can slow down your computer because it updates you locally as well every time there is a change. That constant syncing can cause performance issues. It works fine if it is a smaller number of folders and files, but whenever there is a large number of files, that has been an issue for sure. They need to really improve on that. That is the biggest weakness of the solution, I would say. Syncing is number one. Another thing is when you delete stuff. You do not get a notification if you delete something online. So for example, if you are the owner of a folder and I have access to that folder and there is a file there and I delete it, it actually goes to your recycle bin. In other words, it goes to the owner's recycle bin. That is fine, but then the owner never gets a notification. So, if you have 10 files and then you notice that one is missing, you do not even know who deleted it or when it got deleted. It is residing in your recycle bin, and you can see that it is there. But you do not even know that you have to look at your recycle bin because you never got a notification. That is really a potentially huge issue with the solution. If you are a team leader and you do not know if someone is deleting your stuff, you might eventually lose something by accident. Another thing is permissions. There is no way to set non-delete permissions. You can be a viewer or an editor. If you are an editor, you can delete files. If you are a viewer, you can not delete files. But there is no option to remove the delete privileges from an editor. I think other companies, like Box and Dropbox, have that feature and they allow you to make it so you can edit but you do not have the ability to delete. You want people to be able to edit without deleting probably most of the time. I think that these are some pretty basic and fundamental things that Microsoft just does not have. But they could do even more with permissions. Just having viewing and editing permission is pretty basic, but even in Box, a person can view and edit, but not download. Or a person can view, edit, and download. The point is that there is more to do than just view and edit. There are many different options and combinations in Box that OneDrive just does not have. It is not so interesting to just have more new features. What is more important is having features that are really necessary and already exist in other competing products. That is something that I think Microsoft should strive for with OneDrive. Microsoft is probably one of the biggest companies in the world. If something like Box or Dropbox has better features than you, then you really need to look at your products and make some revisions.
The user interface could be a little more intuitive and user friendly. It would also make a difference if they would work on the design a little bit.
From my own personal experience, I have a story that tells about how and why the product can be improved and it mostly has to do with customer care. This is about a situation that really caused me great aggravation. I am an independent consultant, so I have OneDrive in my business set up and I pay monthly and it bills monthly. I foolishly let my granddaughter get a robot gaming account under my Microsoft account. Because she is only nine years old and she has autism, she really does not understand what she is doing sometimes. She kept buying points for a game she was playing a lot of and I did not know she was doing it. She would go buy $200 a day in robot points, and then I got on my robots bill and found out what was going on. They would not let me separate the accounts so I could stop the billing. If I canceled the account, I would have to cancel her account, and then she would lose all the things that she had done and accumulated in the game. So I removed the credit card, let that account die out, and then started a new account. I made a new password and all that stuff to start over. When you get a new account, they give you a 30-day free trial. Because I use it and knew I wanted it I already bought PowerPoint in the project and they built that. When the trial came near to the end, they sent me an email saying "your trial is coming to an end" and I called them just to make sure that the PowerPoint purchase was not considered part of the trial that they were talking about because I didn't want to lose anything when I let it lapse. They assured me that everything was good. When the trial came to an end. They removed all the files and I had been working on with a client analyzing their IBR (incremental borrowing rate). So I lost all my trees and they totally removed everything I'd spent hours on. I called and tried to find out what was going on. They spent an hour or two on the phone with me trying to go different ways calling different departments to find out where they might still have the data. Turns out they did not. They lost it. So my caution about the product and trial periods is to be careful. Because I had multiple Microsoft accounts, when the first tech checked and looked it up they thought I had a valid license for the new Microsoft account. They were referring to the old one. There is my lesson learned. Besides that episode, I like working with Microsoft products. But then another thing happened. I had another customer and they wanted me to set up on their desktop. So I created a Microsoft account for them so I could use their client email and their OneDrive and all that stuff in their name. For the life of me, I could not get that removed off my desktop after I had it installed. I had to call Microsoft to try and get it working right again. I could not do a regular delete to get rid of the stuff from the other account. It does not let you delete it. So every time I logged in from scratch, it sent up an error saying I had the wrong password for this account. I just do not need that account anymore and there was no way to get rid of it or regain control of the login. They were terrible for support after COVID hit. I want to write an article on the companies that achieved during COVID and then the companies that used it as an excuse to provide poor customer service. Microsoft would be under that jurisdiction. In the end, I would use it again if it worked and I got my password straight. It works great but with the product, you get the behemoth Microsoft customer support services. I have not contacted them lately, so I do not know if they got it working right. When COVID hit, they just went off the deep end claiming they could not fill support requests. Otherwise, I think Microsoft is pretty good. I can not think of anything that I could make OneDrive better. Besides having different outcomes from these experiences with Microsoft products, I have been happy with them.
In the most recent builds, I think the way OneDrive works has become very confusing. It is constantly cloning the entire machine. You transfer that content over, but it will not send it to your local machine. You activate the one drive cloud, you sign in and you see all your documents in the cloud, but you have to physically move the content back onto the local machine or it remains stored only on the cloud. Working offline is not always an option in that case. It did not seem like it used to be that way. I have noticed that it changed in the last six months to a year. It did not change for the better. Possibly the ability — which might exist now and I just have not been able to find a way to do it — is to completely turn off automated features. Once you are signed in to your Microsoft accounts, you can not get out of OneDrive. You can only pause the backup. It does use a lot of resources because it is constantly syncing everything. You can pause the syncing for between 2 to 24 hours, but it would be kind of nice to just be able to log out of it and use it how you want rather than how it seems to dictate.
I'm not sure of any features the solution is missing. For me, for what I need, it works. I don't see room for improvement. The solution has sub-folders, which are visible to various team members. If you want to ensure the information is private, you would need to have a certain level of seniority in the office or administration rights. This would allow you to change its visibility.
The area that can be improved is to be able to share easily with folks outside the organization and with folks who don't have an account, such as Microsoft Office account. Sometimes, when you send a link, you might have some form of repetition. If you don't know how to share it properly, whoever you are sharing it with will have issues using it. Also, the link that you use to share a document can be made a bit shorter. It doesn't have to be long. Typically, when you want to share a document, it has everything, such as the name of the organization, SharePoint, etc. A short URL will be easier to use, and it will just make life easier, especially because a lot of people are now going mobile. I'm not sure if there's a mobile version of Microsoft OneDrive, similar to Google Drive. If they don't have a mobile app, it would also be nice to have a mobile app because that would help in checking out your documents. It would be easy to check your documents on the go on your phone.
I think it's quite easy to use. It's quite complete because I use Google Drive as well, but I think the simple feature is it's similar to Google Drive, except I think it's just integrated to the rest of the Office 365 suite. The file structure insight could be made more flexible like for creating more flexible folders.
The user interface sometimes fails and when it cannot connect, it does not give the reason why. Interface-wise, I prefer Google drive.
The online application is quite limited, for this and other Office offerings. The solution is pricey, even though you get a lot of applications with it.
It should be more tailored towards pictures and video content. I have Google Drive purely just to look after my pictures and video because the way they organize videos and pictures is easier, and is a lot easier to retrieve a needle in a haystack. If I want to pick out certain criteria of pictures, Google enables me to do that whereas OneDrive is a bit flaky. I'd like to see more integration with Microsoft Teams. The back end file structure is based on SharePoint. When you open up a file within Teams, it says to open up in SharePoint and I hate SharePoint. I'd like it if I can knowing full well that all my data repository is stored and in the back end on OneDrive and I can just work in conjunction with Microsoft Teams, not SharePoint. SharePoint is useless.
An online video player would be great, since sometimes you have to download the video to play it. Also, an increase in the capacity of storage in the free version would be nice. Offer more plans in the paid version. It would also be convenient if from OneDrive you could listen to music or audio files that are uploaded to the cloud that include an online multimedia player, which allows the reproduction and visualization of multimedia files in general.