How to sync OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams files to computer or smart phone

hi there matt wade here and today we're going to cover how to sync files in onedrive sharepoint and even microsoft teams to your devices for offline access using the onedrive sync tool so let's jump into it microsoft 365 work and school accounts have a handy way to keep files locally on your pc mac or smartphone using onedrive yep onedrive isn't just a place for you to store files it's also a syncing feature and an app for ios and android which admittedly can be confusing from a brand perspective with sync you're able to access files stored in onedrive sharepoint and teams through windows explorer and mac os finder which is especially useful if you love the days of share drives and click click clicking through to get your files right through explorer or finder onedrive also lets you choose which files you want to save on your device so you don't overflow its storage with tons of folders and files you don't actually care about open an office file while connected to the internet and it'll save all changes automatically just like if you opened it through onedrive sharepoint or teams directly open it while offline and changes will be automatically uploaded the next time you get reconnected let's run through some demo on how to do this on a pc the pc and mac experiences are almost identical so i'll stick to just the one first make sure you either have the official onedrive sync client that's the official name of the sync tool or that you've downloaded and installed it if you have windows 10 you should already have it installed otherwise find a link to the download in the video description the same app is used for onedrive personal like a live or microsoft account and onedrive for business for work and school accounts you can find it through the start menu and searching onedrive once it's open you'll see a little blue onedrive logo in the system tray click that to log in and you should be set for syncing you can log in with multiple accounts if you'd like okay so i've gotten started here with um my office 365 or microsoft 365 account and what i want to do is open up um onedrive so i'm on windows i can go to the start menu here and just type in onedrive this is where you're going to find it is through the start menu again if you don't already have it make sure to install it and once you have it open you should see a little icon in the bottom right now i also have my current account signed in but what i want to do is sign in with another account so let's do that all right now that i'm signed in what's going to happen is my onedrive the actual place where i store all my personal files will automatically become available to me in my windows explorer or mac os finder onedrive is going to run me through a little intro thing here so let's click through that it's going to ask me where i want to store those files i'm good with storing them where it's going to choose by default it's going to show me that i can drag and drop those files directly into explorer which is super handy which is basically the features that we're hoping to get and then it's also going to show me that i can share files through the right click menu and then these are the three things you really want to be aware of first is uh the basically the download status so if the file is not downloaded to your device you're gonna see a little blue icon little blue cloud icon means that it's a cloud file anytime you open it it's going to be downloaded at that time so you need to have an internet connection to be able to open it if it is an open green check mark it means that it has been downloaded recently it's available currently but it may not actually remain downloaded and if it's a solid green check mark that means that you have set it so that it always is available on your device those are important aspects and we'll talk about that in a bit all right now that we're closed there i can open up my windows explorer and this will show me a list of quick apps on the left side and one of those is going to be my onedrive for contoso contoso is the organization that we're using for this demo and this is the list of all the files that are coming from my onedrive now if i look at onedrive in the browser you'll see all these folders there's six and a number of files you should see the same items in this listing now let's take a look at the status this is what's really important if you see a blue cloud which at first every file should be a blue cloud none of them are going to be downloaded um except for a couple that i actually had just done before these are are basically files on demand is what the feature name is called you can see that they're there if you click to double or if you double click to open any of them right now they will download instantly they will open for you as long as you have an internet connection but if you do not have an internet connection you want to make sure you have these available to you let's say you want one of these here you would just right click on the item and there's an option to always keep on this device so if i click that it's going to refresh and you'll see i got a green check mark next to that let's say i want all of those files that i've been sharing in my microsoft teams chats just in case i'm going to always keep on this device as well now let's say some of these end up taking up a bunch of space i don't want this folder any longer i can right click and click free up space and that will update and turn back into a blue cloud which means it's no longer using space in my computer another feature you'll see a little uh person head here this means that these files have been shared you can share files directly from onedrive uh from the windows explorer experience through here by going to share and you'll get the same share options here that you would if you're going through one drive in the browser or sharepoint anything like that and once it gets shared that will get updated with the um the information now if you want to manage the access or do anything more complex with sharing i would definitely recommend to just go back to onedrive in the browser and do it there because that's really where all that stuff lives but definitely useful and handy to have okay but let's talk about sharepoint microsoft teams so of course behind every microsoft team is a sharepoint site that site has a documents library the default documents library is where all the files in a team gets stored every channel in that team has a folder in that documents library so let's say i'm looking at this mark 8 project team here it is down here these are all the folders or all the channels that we have for this team and let's just make sure we show those so you can see it and let's drag this up too alright so if i go into any one of these channels and i click on files i can click open in sharepoint and this will pop open and show me all the files that are available in this um this site and in this team so if i click on documents and go up a level these are all the different channels plus some extra files that have been uploaded here as well because you don't just have to upload into the channel but if i wanted to go into let's say go to market plan this does have some files in here i can click on here and i can see there's files so very quickly from teams you can see there is a sync button right here i can press that button and it will sync this channel's files to my through onedrive to my computer now one thing i will say you can do that but a lot of times when you're in a team you kind of want access to everything in the team i very much recommend skipping this step and going straight to the sharepoint site and going up to the documents level so instead of syncing just the go to market plan which is essentially like going to go to market plan and clicking sync in sharepoint if i sync this it's only syncing this folder i want to sync the whole documents library so i'm going to go up a level and then click sync this will bring up an option to um sync this and actually i've did some testing before which is why it's asking me that question but i'm going to now bring this down and i can click outside of here to close it and if i go back to windows explorer you will see that in this cont in this area i now have a section called contoso with a little office building next to it and you'll see that i have the mark 8 project team documents i also have an older folder from before when i was testing which is that folder or one channel in it and there's nothing in here now because the connection is now broken but note that both of these exist they can exist at about the same time and it can actually be very annoying to have team all documents team channel when this channel actually lives in this document section anyway and you can always just favorite these or grab one of these and say i want this to be under quick access you can just drop it in there right and like that's that's super super easy to do and not something you have to really worry about so i can always drop that right there and there's my quick access no worries anyway sharepoint and teams the concept is basically the same now there's another feature in uh within sharepoint and uh teams and and onedrive where if you don't want to actually sync like the team or the sharepoint site uh the document library the folders you can actually add it as a favorite or as a connection to onedrive so it actually gets listed under your onedrive listing as opposed to under your your separate organization area here so let's say i want to go into this sales and marketing area this feature is only available through sharepoint at this point you can't do it in um in teams directly so let's go to open sharepoint and we'll pull this up what i can do here is i can add a shortcut to onedrive to this entire document library or to this folder whatever i'm looking at but let's say i want to go up to the documents level and let's say i really like having that monthly reports option i can either click the uh check mark and click add to shortcut or there's a little add shortcut button right here so i'm just going to click on that note that if you are already syncing a team or a sharepoint list sorry sharepoint document library or folder you cannot do this as well and get the sync benefit it will actually cause a conflict within onedrive where it says hold on we already have these files so we can't do that so if i go to onedrive and i refresh i should have that folder from that sharepoint site and it's called monthly reports you can tell because it has a little link icon on top of the folder and if i go back to onedrive here you'll see i have the exact same option right there it also has a little link these are not moved to onedrive it's basically like a pointer from one drive to the sharepoint site but it just makes things easier to have access to i can do all the same things here with uh making sure that these are saved locally uh when it comes to sharing i would definitely not uh toy around with sharing because you want to do that from teams or from sharepoint because the permissions on those sites or those teams are more important than being able to just one off you know share stuff out but you can see i can do a quick uh locally store all this stuff and have it available to me very very easy very quick and very cool now one other quick thing i wanted to point out you can have multiple accounts here so you see i have two different one drive icons one is for my personal account one is for the demo account and you can always kind of bounce between the two if you need to another thing you should always be aware of if there's a little red x here there's something wrong you need to fix it if syncing is not working that can be bad you can always uh play around with what's happening up here as well you can change where folders are where things are being stored you can add an account there are a lot of setting options you should really take a look at that now let's run through some demo on how to use this on a smartphone in this case we use an iphone but android's experience is similar everything you see here also works the same on ipad first make sure you've installed the onedrive app from the respective app store log in with your work or school account and you should be set for syncing like the desktop app you can log in with multiple accounts if you'd like okay from the smartphone you're going to want to open the onedrive app also it's super handy to have the word excel powerpoint onenote apps available and downloaded because if you try to open a file from there it's going to open it in that file or in that app and if that app doesn't exist it's not going to be able to you're not going to be able to edit it which is going to be kind of annoying so if i open up onedrive i'm logged in here if you're not logged in already it should ask you to do so but you can always jump up to the top left and click add account that's definitely an option and then you'll see your list of files and folders here so from the earlier demo you see i have all the same files and folders and importantly i also see that monthly reports that linked folder that came from one of my teams which is super handy and if you want to make these files or folders available offline just click the ellipsis next to a name and you can click this make available offline and you can see a little gray check mark next to the file name that tells you that that file is available offline now you can also look at some of the other features that are available in onedrive let's tap home this will give you a list of recent files it'll give you a list of shared libraries which will show you some of the files that you're working in recently it also shows you your offline files so that's really critical so that offline files is going to be under home scroll all the way down super super handy and then the other thing is hop over to libraries and these are all going to be a list of your frequent uh history or your favorite sites in sharepoint never forget about that following not following star in the top right of sharepoint site that makes it very easy to get to something so let's say i want to go into the uh the mark 8 project team same project we were looking at on the pc i can look at all the files that are in here so documents align with the team and this is the same list of folders so let's say that go to market plan which is what we're looking at in the team if i tap that i can make this available offline as well you can see there's a little uh blue sync icon that is syncing it tells me that there's a little status update and how many files are left to sync and once it's done i have that little check mark if i go to home i scroll down i can now see all those files are available to me and in a very quick way to get to them because it's just those files that are most important to me but a lot of people don't realize that libraries tap tab there that shows your your teams and your sharepoint sites so very very uh handy now let's cover some tips and tricks and best practices on this first sharepoint and onedrive can hold files up to 250 gigabytes in size that's huge if you're uploading large files don't drag and drop them into teams or onedrive or sharepoint directly instead drag them into a folder in explorer or finder and let the sync tool do the work to upload it if you disconnect your or turn off your computer the sync tool can resume the upload whereas if you're depending on a browser to upload stuff it will just fail in that situation second keep an eye on those blue and green icons and if you're starting to run out of space in your computer you want to set some of those bigger files and folders that you might not use all that often to be cloud only use only what you need at a given time rather than trying to hoard everything on your device the more space you use in your device the slower it may run for a quicker experience save only the really important stuff quick tip when you stop storing a file locally it goes to the trash empty the trash to get the space back third stop syncing individual teams and sharepoint sites when you're not using them anymore theoretically uh you know when you're removed from a team or a site you lose access so you shouldn't see those files anyway but if you're just hanging around for a random input here and there you don't need a 100 gigabyte site full of stuff bloating up your hard drive fourth download things before you need them if you're going to a customer site for a big meeting where you're presenting you want to make sure you have all the necessary files on your device before you leave your home base that way if you have trouble getting on their wi-fi or they have bad cell reception and you can't hot spot it you still have the files available and you can follow the agenda or share your slides same goes for the phone really being able to pull up the agenda once in a while on your phone even in an area with no cell service and a hard to join wi-fi network is incredibly helpful fifth get to know the onedrive mobile app did you know it can scan documents and whiteboards and create pdfs using the app pretty slick for the next level up download the office mobile app you can scan documents and tables and automatically create word documents in excel spreadsheets the tech is pretty cool sixth the add shortcut to onedrive feature can be really handy if you like having your files listed in one central place grabbing one library or folder at a time and seeing it directly in your onedrive can be a major win don't forget about that seventh keep an eye on that onedrive icon in windows and mac os if there are syncing problems it has an easy to miss x symbol which means your files aren't actually pushing to the cloud which can lead to issues ranging from minor to massive so always be aware of the status of the app never take it for granted because sometimes it just craps out last know when to use which tool onedrive is great for your personal files sharepoint team sites and microsoft teams are great for collaboration and sharepoint communication sites are perfect for sharing information to a broad audience check out my which tool went overview in this video up here and i think that's it for now there's a lot to know about syncing as you can see but once you have some expertise it becomes second nature and really helps make life easier in so many ways and if you like helpful tips and tricks like this you may be interested in my new book teach yourself visually microsoft teams is now available for pre-order and will be the go-to guide for everyone collaborating and meeting with microsoft teams that includes files and syncing check out the link below thanks so much for watching i hope you found this useful please leave any questions or comments below as always a like and subscribe is much appreciated happy syncing all those important files so you always have the important info at your fingertips

Channel: jumpto365

Views: 92,542

Keywords: office 365, microsoft 365, microsoft office, modern workplace, SharePoint, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, OneDrive app, OneDrive sync, file sync, Team site, file syncing, information management, knowledge management, permissions, file management, file share, windows explorer, macos finder, mac finder, finer, explorer

Id: 4lJXVIIwGHY

Length: 18min 9sec (1089 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021