Personal storage is moving to OneDrive
OneDrive is for ONE person, and that person is you!
This spring W&M IT announced a university technology project to move from local storage (H: drives) to Microsoft OneDrive. The university continuously strategizes new ways to take a cloud-first approach to technology, and this change will allow W&M to do that while maximizing the return on investment in our Microsoft O365 license, additionally allowing for increased benefits and improved efficiency for users and administrators.
While OneDrive is not exactly new to the university, we know a lot of our community hasn’t been introduced to its many benefits or started to utilize it yet for file storage. OneDrive is the preferred tool for storage at W&M, and everyone receives a minimum of 1 TB of storage.
OneDrive Overview
OneDrive is an application available to all faculty, staff and students at William & Mary through the university's Microsoft Office 365 license. Its purpose is to access, share and collaborate on files from anywhere (no need to connect to the VPN) and on any device. All you need is secure internet access.
OneDrive is connected to many of the applications you use on a regular basis, like Word, Excel and Teams. When you share a file from OneDrive, you don’t need to email it to yourself or save it to a thumb drive. Your files are always at your fingertips by just logging into your O365 account at office.wm.edu.
Like your H: drive, OneDrive should be used as your individual storage space. You are the only one with access to your OneDrive. Files from your OneDrive can be shared with one or multiple people, and you can set an expiration date for the shared links for increased security.
Why OneDrive?
OneDrive allows you to upload files, share them with others, give others permission to edit files and work on them simultaneously, access your files from anywhere and on any device, and sync to your PC or Mac to access your files even when you’re offline.
When to use OneDrive
- Personal work files.
- Draft documents that you are not ready to share with your team or others.
When not to use OneDrive
- Personal materials such as photos of family vacations.
- Official documents (such as policies and procedures). These should go in a shared repository.
- Saving documents that your whole team needs access to.
- Team collaboration.
- Storage for units’ documents.
How to access OneDrive and your Migrated H: Drive
There are a few different ways to access OneDrive which is where your H: drive has been migrated.
1. From a William & Mary managed Windows computer, simply launch Windows File Explorer. Click “OneDrive – William & Mary” in the left navigation pane to access all your files and folders (including H Drive)
2. From a Mac computer, launch Finder. From the left navigation pane select “OneDrive – William & Mary”. Your files and folders (including H Drive) will appear in the main window.
3. From a web browser, sign into office.wm.edu using your W&M Username and password and select “OneDrive” from the waffle.
The "Home" landing page will show the files that you have recently accessed. To see all your files, click “My Files” on the left and the main window on the right will show all your files and folders (including you H Drive folder).
To learn more about OneDrive, get links to trainings, and more visit our OneDrive webpage.
To learn more about the university’s move to OneDrive, including a timeline and answers to frequently asked questions, visit the project announcement page.
