How to Setup and Use OneDrive Synchronization Between Your Windows Devices

hi in this video i'm going to show you how to set up and use onedrive synchronization between your windows devices so this has been around for a little bit so it allows you to kind of keep all the files and stuff in sync on all your computers so let's say you have a laptop and a desktop and a work computer and you sign in with the same user account and you want to have all your desktop files and my documents files you know matching you could use this to uh keep it that way so the first thing you need to do is you need to make sure you're using a windows account for a login so if you're using a local account it's not going to not going to work and then you need to make sure it's turned on so we're going to be doing this on this windows 11 computer this other windows 11 computer and we have a windows 10 computer so all logged in with the same user and so what we need to do is on the windows 11 you go to settings and you go to accounts and you go to windows backup and then make sure these are turned on so if you want to have it remember your apps so let's say you get a new computer and you want to have it know what apps you had installed you could have this turned on kind of like when you get a new phone and it remembers what's what apps you installed on your phone or what you had on your phone i should say and then you have this other option here what'll remember passwords language preferences and miscellaneous windows settings to kind of keep things in sync you know like the desktop image and that kind of thing between your uh computer or computers and you can see here one drive is syncing and the app list is backed up and preferences are backed up so we're good to go on this computer and you can see down here we have the one drive uh little cloud icon showing that it's running using the personal free account which i believe is five gigs of storage and it's limited on what you get to backup and i'll kind of show you that in a minute too okay and then on we have the same thing going on here and then for windows 10 it's kind of similar you go to your settings and you go to accounts and you want to go to sync your settings so it's different and it's the same kind of setup it's just kind of laid out differently and then what you might run across on windows 10 or 11 this password won't sync until you verify the identity on this device then all you got to do is click on verify put in your the windows microsoft account that you use for this email address and password then we'll send you an email with a code then you put that in and then you'll be verified on that computer so that's just in case you run into this problem okay so let's try this out all right so you'll notice here we have some icons here or some [Music] desktop shortcuts and so on and image file and powerpoint file and you can see this little blue cloud icon here that means the file is being synchronized from another device through your onedrive onto this computer so this is not where originally was so if we make a new let's say make a new text file here you can see that little synchronization sign and eventually it'll turn into a green check mark so that means this file it's being synchronized but it's originally on this computer so now if we go to let's say this computer so here's that same file but you'll see it has a cloud icon meaning it came from a different computer if that makes sense so we could do we could open this file here and add some text and we could save it and now you can see it's got the green check mark here meaning it was last edited on this computer so now if we go back to that windows 10 you'll see it's got the green check mark here too meaning it was edited on both computers and i'll show you why that is so if you go to your little cloud thing here and so here's your recent files here and you can see the version history you'll see it was modified 32 seconds ago that's when we've modified it on the other computer so now if we go here we'll open it up and add some new text newer text save it [Music] okay and if we go back to our version history here you can see here's the original one here's the the change we made now if we go back to the other computer here or actually any other computer so we have it both here and so let's say we wanted to look at our version history you do from any computer and let's say we wanted to go back to the oldest one with the first line of text we could click on the three dots and restore so now it's syncing now we have a new version because we just made a change here so if we go back here we have the original text so we reverted it back to the first save rather than the second save that was on before all right so now let's say let's look at our documents and stuff so here's this computer so go here this pc documents you can see a little cloud icon next to desktop pictures and documents that's because those are the only folders that are being backed up because when you use the free account that's the default folders and if you go to your settings here you'll see that if you go to choose folders you see desktop documents and pictures and also this personal vault and while you're here let's say you don't want this camera roll folder to be backed up you can uncheck it and then that won't get sync between your devices anymore so you can kind of edit these but you can't add like let's say you wanted to add your music folder you can't do that without having to do some funky stuff like you know go to its properties and change its location from the default you know under the username to your onedrive folder but we're not going to get into that but you'll know that you know if you get the advanced for or the pay for version you'll have some additional options and then you'll also here see here two under settings using 15 megabytes of five gigabytes cloud storage so you get the five gigabytes okay so now let's do another test here let's make a new file here just for uh [Music] let's make a new folder just leave a new folder okay so now you got the check mark here let's go to the other windows 11 computer here there's our new folder with the sync now let's open that let's make a new file in there let's just make a new image okay so you can see the status it's synchronizing and it's synchronized and now this has the green check mark meaning it's the latest and greatest now let's go to windows 10 here's our new folder and there's our new bitmap image with the cloud icon meaning it was a synchronized from another computer so what happens if we delete this folder that was synchronized on another computer so let's click on it press delete deleting it online folder permanent removes our computer with your pc without sending it to the recycle bin so it means it's not going to go to recycle bin let's say yes so that's gone so now it's giving you a message deleted files are removed everywhere telling it should be deleted from other computers as well once they synchronize so they got it so let's go to another computer here so that fold new folder is gone and that new folder is gone here so now what if we delete a file that was let's create a file here uh let's just do another folder okay so this is created here let's make sure it's synced new folder two new folder two so what if we delete this file that was created on this computer it's not a synced copy was created here deleted deleted and deleted so hopefully that gives you an idea of how it works um like i said just watch for the icons or the like it's kind of like a shortcut pointer icon here but it's a cloud or a green check mark indicating where the file was last modified or created and then everything you know it kind of looks the same on windows 10 and windows 11 and then anytime you go to your cloud things here and look at your recent uh synced folders and files and then you can go to your settings make adjustments to your folders if needed and let's see any other interesting stuff here you know just basic settings about starting onedrive when you sign to windows what you're going to want to do because otherwise it's not going to sync notifications that kind of stuff yeah so pretty much that's all you got to do is make sure in your settings your under your user accounts your have these enabled and onedrive is syncing and then everything should be working as planned all right thanks for watching and be sure to subscribe [Music]

Channel: OnlineComputerTips

Views: 61,546

Keywords: onedrive, onedrive syncronization, copy files and folders between computers, shared folders, cloud backup, cloud storage, onedrive personal

Id: OP2mp8tAqes

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022