If you’re like most people, you probably have OneDrive set up so that it’s always available online. But if you want to use OneDrive offline, there are a few things you can do to make that happen. First, create a new OneDrive account and password if you don’t have one already. This will help protect your data offline. Second, open OneDrive and sign in with your new account. If you’re using an older computer or device, be sure to update your software so that OneDrive is working properly offline. Third, open the “OneDrive for Business” app on your work computer or device and sign in with your company’s account. This will allow you to access all of the features of OneDrive for Business offline. Fourth, if you’re using an iPhone or iPad, open the “One Drive for iPhone” app and sign in with your company’s account. This will allow you to access all of the features of OneDrive for iPhone offline.
One of the best features of OneDrive in Windows 8.1 is that even if you have a terabyte of files up there in the cloud, it isn’t going to automatically try to download them to every device that you use. The files only download on-demand… but what if you want to make them download all at once?
You can right-click on any file or folder inside of your OneDrive and choose whether to make it available offline, or to make it online-only, which will remove your local copy but keep it up there in the cloud.
But to change this setting to be the default, you’ll need to take a quick trip into the OneDrive settings, which can be found by right-clicking on the OneDrive tray icon and choosing Settings.
Once in here, you can check the box for “Make all files available even when this PC isn’t connected to the Internet”. This will download everything all at once, and make sure that all future files that get placed into OneDrive from any device will get downloaded.
On the other hand, if you have way too much stuff in your OneDrive and you don’t need it to be available on the PC that you’re working on, you can remove all the files from your local system and make them available online-only by clicking the “Make all files online-only” button.
