Forum Discussion
Does anyone inform their users how to set OneDrive to open in the client applications?
I'm looking for other opinions and experiences on this because of a question I've been asked. There are two ways to change your OneDrive for Business area (in browser) to open documents in the client application. It only affects the OneDrive that it is being set upon though, but it definitely has ripple effects that can cause confusion in users when they experience inconsistencies in behaviors. I think the shared documents experiences in particular might be the areas that would experience most of the weird behaviors.
Has anyone else documented or instructed users about doing this? What behavior changes in the UI were noticed by people? Was it confusing or did people just brush off the inconsistent opening in the browser/client application experiences?
4 Replies
- There's a mix of personal preference, lack of curiosity and fearfulness of asking questions at play here.
I taught a rule of thumb that documents opened from the browser will open there, and those opened from a desktop file system will open with the designated file handler.
In some cases I will point out feature differences between the two app versions that are not easily self-discoverable.
There's a mix of personal preference, lack of curiosity and fearfulness of asking questions at play here.Are we talking about OneDrive users, technology users, the global community, or all of the above? LOL
I like using the rule of thumb to use the natural behavior of the application to lead.
I understand the reasons to use the Office full client features, having all features at hand... but perhaps those are most needed when starting to author a document? Just pop open the Office full client application on a PC and go to town creating. Save the document to OneDrive and open the document up again from the full app's recent docs to continue edits.
During the proofreading, feedback processes, collaboration in general are the extended features needed? The Office product web clients have implemented a lot of features included in the computer-client applications since 2018 and they're still being improved upon.
- What one person thinks is "extended features" or "bloat" is not the same as another's. Microsoft in general has a better understanding based on data from instrumented desktop apps and service figures from online versions.
