OneDrive Troubleshooting

1. Know what Office 365 and how it differs from other Office products including the difference between OneDrive for Business and OneDrive Personal.

Office 365 (O365) is provided free of charge to all university faculty, staff and students. It includes access to latest online versions of 20 plus apps, free desktop installs of the complete Office suite of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, and mobile versions for of apps for smartphones and other mobile devices.   This includes desktop versions on up to 5 PCs or Macs, mobile apps on up to 5 tablets and phones and 5 TB of disk space. We own the most advanced version which is called Education A5.

Here’s a video that provides a quick overview of O365:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/video-what-is-office-365-847caf12-2589-452c-8aca-1c009797678b?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Here’s a link to directions for accessing O365 at Stevenson University:

https://www.softchalkcloud.com/lesson/serve/Zt6FfGmj9JwaHA/html

O365 includes OneDrive for Business which includes advanced back up and file sharing features.   OneDrive for Business and OneDrive for Personal are separate applications with separate sign-in pages and credentials. OneDrive for Business is Stevenson’s approved file-syncing and sharing application for faculty and professional staff on Stevenson-owned machines, while OneDrive for Personal is simply that–file-syncing and sharing for personal, non-work use.

Here’s a video that provides you a quick overview on what’s available in OneDrive for Business:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RWfnZM?pid=ocpVideo0-innerdiv-oneplayer&postJsllMsg=true&maskLevel=20&market=en-us

2. Make sure you are using Office365 provided by Stevenson University and not a personal Microsoft account by accessing it from the Office365 portal.

It is possible to have a personal account that uses your Stevenson university email address as well as an official O365 account for work/school.   You should always make sure you are using the right account by doing the following:

Several years ago, we had an unmanaged tenant which actually linked to a personal OneDrive account so its possible you created a personal account and did not even know it. There are places where you may be given a choice to access your Microsoft versus your work/school account. Always choose your work/school account. You can update your personal account not to use your Stevenson email address.   Please contact the helpdesk and submit a ticket if you require further information.

In addition to accessing the O365 portal through the direct link, you can also access the O365 portal under Applications and in Blackboard on the SU Login Links tab.

3. Use the to access OneDrive Online available on O365 portal. Avoid using the desktop version of OneDrive\OneDrive for Business and syncing on Stevenson owned computers.

OneDrive and OneDrive for business used to built-in to Windows 7, 8.1 and 10.   This created a lot of issues with syncing because of security issues and other small differences between different versions of Windows.   OneDrive is now an application that you download versus being built in.   Currently Stevenson has Stevenson owned computers with a variety of versions of windows as well as restricted permissions. This means that using the desktop application on campus computers can create problems with trying to sync locally.

The cloud version of OneDrive Online is a fully functioning application and allows users to access their files from any computer with an internet connection.   There is no requirement to sync files. Files can be recovered up to 90 days from your own personal recycle bin in OneDrive for Business Online as well as after that time by our university O365 portal administrator.   Files are backed up using the advanced storage capabilities available through our full tenant.

Users should access OneDrive Online through the “OneDrive” icon on the O365 portal page at https://portal.office.com . Using direct links and other book marks can create issues since they are not available on all computers.

Here’s a video that shows you how to access OneDrive Online through O365:

http://www.screencast.com/t/D3h15Me8NQ

4. Know how to open and save files to OneDrive Online.

The O365 portal page is designed to stay open on your computer while you are logged in. Many users leave the site up and running as long as they are sitting at a specific machine during the day.   This avoids having to login multiple times to access files.

Here’s a link to a quick start training on using OneDrive Online:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/upload-files-and-folders-to-onedrive-for-business-a1397e56-61ec-4ed2-9dac-727bf8ac3357

It is possible to open files from OneDrive Online from the O365 portal or “cloud” as well as directly from the desktop versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint with Office 2016 and higher.

Here are directions for adding a Microsoft account to your Office 2016 apps which will allow you to open the files from OneDrive Online without having the O365 portal site open:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Save-your-document-to-OneDrive-in-Word-d7c23ed3-a80a-4ff4-ade5-91211a7614f3

5. Learn how to collaborate with others using OneDrive Online.

It’s important to know how to collaborate with others using OneDrive Online to avoid duplicate files and copies of files downloaded in multiple locations.   Learning to collaborate using OneDrive with its advanced version tracking allows you to see exactly what was updated without using track changes. You can even roll back to a prior version and then roll back to the current version.

Here’s a link to a quick start start training on collaboration in O365: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/video-work-together-seamlessly-27136232-e097-48da-9002-41812629d3d8

Final Note: The most common issues with uploading files are poor file naming and connections with low bandwidth.   Keep in mind best practices for file naming and wifi connections.

Poor file naming is one of the biggest reasons that users have trouble with uploading and accessing files to OneDrive online, Blackboard and other instructional software applications.   It’s actually one of the top two issues we see with faculty, staff and students.

Here’s a link to a set of direction on naming files to avoid problems:

https://www.softchalkcloud.com/lesson/serve/nxoXiMdVQGAsj3/html

The second issue poor bandwidth connections.   Public wifi through coffee shops, libraries and other businesses frequently have low bandwidth.   Wifi connections on campus can be problematic if a lot of users are accessing the same Wifi access point. You should always be sure to login using your single sign on credentials when using Wifi at Stevenson rather than utilizing the guest network.

Here’s a link to directions for accessing WiFi on campus:

https://www.stevenson.edu/about/campus-services/office-information technology/wireless/index.html