What is OneDrive for Business?

If your organization uses Office 365, then you have OneDrive. But you may not be using it.

Office 365 plans for business – Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Premium, and Office 365 Business Essentials – all include OneDrive. OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud service that stores and protects your files, lets you share them with other people, and access them from anywhere, on any device. If you’re familiar with Dropbox or eFolder, OneDrive is a similar type of cloud storage service.

When you use OneDrive with an account provided by your company or school, it’s sometimes called OneDrive for Business. And OneDrive is powerful and integrates seamlessly with all the other Office 365 applications and services, like Outlook, Word, and SharePoint.

Access your OneDrive for Business account

So if your organization has an Office 365 for business plan, how do you access your OneDrive account?

Your organization may have a unique URL to your Office 365 products. However, if you don’t know what it is, you can go directly to https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/signin/.

1. Enter your school or work email address, not a personal one, and then click Next.
2. If it prompts you, select “Work or school account” until you see a password prompt.
3. Enter the password for your work login and click Sign in. (If you’re using Office 365 for email, then you’re logging into OneDrive with the same email/password credentials that you use for your Outlook account and/or work network domain.)

If your organization has multi-factor authentication set up, you may need to go through a next step to confirm your authentication. But then you should be logged in and looking at OneDrive.

You can use the toolbar at the top to create or upload new documents. Use the navigation menu on the left to look at your own files (Files) and what other people have shared with you (Shared).

Bookmark this link so you can come back quickly. You can also navigate to OneDrive from any other Office 365 online application by clicking on the App Launcher in the upper left corner.

What next?

To make your files and folders in OneDrive even easier to use and interact with, you can configure the OneDrive desktop sync app. This makes your OneDrive accessible as a synced folder on your computer.