Simple, Smart, and Secure: The next step in sharing files in Microsoft 365
Today at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference, we announced the next generation of sharing for Microsoft 365. Not just an experience refresh, this year we are improving the underlying model that enables collaboration within oM365. We are making it simpler to use, more intelligent, and ensuring that users can keep their content secure by default. In 2011, the cloud revolutionized collaboration and SharePoint Online launched with direct permissioning to enable sharing. Three years later, the on-going cloud transformation led to the invention of “link-based sharing” to allow users to forward and share URLs that grant access within defined, yet secure scopes. Over the last decade, collaboration flourished with over 1.2 Billon people using the share dialog in M365 per month. But as we look ahead, we see new demands emerging to meet the needs of collaborative, agentic workplaces. We are excited to give you a walkthrough of the third generation of sharing in Microsoft 365 and introduce the hero link, the power behind the next decade of collaboration. Meet the hero link The next generation of sharing makes you the hero of collaboration! Each file gets a single hero link which controls all access to the file. Whether you’re clicking “Copy Link”, sending an e-mail, or yes, even copying the URL out of the address bar, it’s all the hero link! This removes the need to create, delete, and manage multiple links on your files, creating a vastly simpler experience. Sharing files with your company has never been easier: simply update the hero link and anyone with the link in your company will get access. Need to lock down a file? Change the link to only allow access for people you directly add, keeping your files secured. We know that users don’t always check file permissions before they send out a link, which can lead to frustrating “Access Denied” page. With hero links, users are empowered to update the link that they already sent, enabling them to quickly increase or decrease the scope of the hero link to match their needs. Secure by default Every hero link starts by working for only the people who have already been added to the document. As users embark on their collaboration journey, they can add more people and teams directly to the document or update the hero link as needed to broaden access. For files that are shared externally, the new share experience explicitly tags external users and guests to make sure they stand out and can be managed appropriately. Administrators will be able to change this default on a per-site collection or OneDrive basis, as needed. With the next generation of sharing, users can further secure their content by controlling who can add people or update access of the file or folder, which gives users the granular control they need to protect their most important content. At a glance access The next generation of sharing requires easy understanding of not only who has access to a file, but how they have access. The Share Dialog and Manage Access experiences are now unified into a single, powerful interface, ensuring users can see and manage their documents and folders with effortless precision. Updates to permissions now appear in real-time, giving users confidence and real-time feedback as they share! With this new sharing model, you can now update permissions in bulk. It is now easier than ever to change or remove permissions for multiple people in a single session. Changes appear instantly, helping you stay in control! If a user wants additional granularity, they can even create additional sharing links to be used for specific purposes. These links can even be named, to help users track and assign them to specific tasks. Copilot + Sharing Save time for your coworkers and keep your team up to speed by using Copilot when you share. With a single click, generate a summary of your document that will be included in the notification mail. Recipients can now understand what the file is about, without needing to open it and read the content. This is a great way to save time and help get your collaborators up to speed! Choose when you notify Have you ever had those days where your notifications are going crazy from teammates adding you to files? We hear your frustration-and we are happy to tell you that you can now choose whether to send an e-mail notification or not when you add people to your file. This update puts you in control of how you share and notify teammates – simply check the box or not based on your preference! This control is critical when you’re bringing a colleague up to speed on multiple documents, or just want to make sure that your file is shared correctly before incorporating into a SharePoint News Post or Amplify! Looking Ahead This new sharing experience and model will be rolling in late 2025! You can track the latest timelines and updates via the Microsoft 365 Message Center or the Microsoft 365 Roadmap (ID: 492622). We know change management is top of mind with any product change, and especially one’s as critical to your organization as collaboration.In addition to the standard updates at Microsoft Docs, we’ll also be uploading how to videos for end users and IT Pros to the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube Channel, walking through the changes in depth on the Sync Up Podcast and in the OneDrive Customer Office Hours. We’re excited to share the future with you! Frequently Asked Questions We know how important collaboration is to your organization! Here are answers to a few of the common questions we’ve heard! If you have others, let us know in the comments below! Q - What do I need to do to prepare for this change? A – For now, keep an eye on the roadmap id and Message Center for more information! As we get closer to release, we’ll ensure you have the content you need to update and prepare your users, admins and security teams. Q - What happens to my existing collaboration experience? A – Nothing! The new sharing model is fully backwards compatible. All the links and permissions you have today will continue to work and will show up in the “Other Links” section of the dialog! Q - Where will this change happen? A - Everywhere! OneDrive powers the sharing experience across 64 apps in M365. This change will be updated consistently across the entire ecosystem.NOW ON DEMAND| OneDrive Office Hours | September 2025
Join the OneDrive product team live each month on our monthly OneDrive Customer Office Hours to hear what's top of mind, get insights into roadmap updates, and dig into a special topic. Each call includes live Q&A where you'll have a chance to ask the OneDrive product team any question about OneDrive - The home of your files.OneDrive for Mac Now Supports Removable Drives
Earlier this year, we announced support for several improvements to OneDrive for Mac, including support for external, non-removable drives. We’ve heard feedback about the differences between “non-removable” and removable drives, and wanting the flexibility to sync OneDrive to any external drive—no matter the type. Now, with OneDrive version 25.127 or later, you can seamlessly sync your OneDrive files to any external drive, including removable ones. Syncing to a removable drive works just like any other drive, except that if you unplug your drive, OneDrive will stop syncing and show an error. You’ll need to plug your drive back in and restart OneDrive to resume syncing. There’s a short grace period between when a drive gets disconnected and when OneDrive shows an error to handle drives that sporadically disconnect. There are a few requirements your system must meet to use this feature: You’ll need version 25.127 or later of OneDrive. You also need to be running macOS 15.0 or later. The drive you select must meet the following requirements: Formatted for APFS Protected by FileVault (see below for instructions) Not read-only, a network drive, or marked as quarantined by macOS. Just like before, you'll need to manually set up a new sync relationship on the new drive. Sync settings won't transfer automatically. You cannot use OneDrive by moving your external drive between Macs; you must set up OneDrive again on each new Mac with the external drive. To protect a drive with FileVault: Format the drive for case-insensitive APFS, if it is not already. Find the drive in the Finder. Option/right click the drive and choose Encrypt. Follow the prompts. That’s it! We’d love to hear your feedback about this change! The best way to do that is to click on the OneDrive icon in the macOS Menu bar (near the clock), click the gear icon, and choose Send Feedback. You can also leave a comment here. We read them all, even if we can’t reply to them all.Copilot can now help Microsoft 365 subscribers get more out of their OneDrive files on Windows
Copilot actions are available for OneDrive files in File Explorer For many of us, our digital lives are organized within the familiar folders and files of OneDrive. Whether it’s cherished family photos, important school assignments, or household documents, OneDrive keeps your files accessible, safe, and organized. And with Copilot, we have brought new ways for you to get information quickly. Now, we are bringing Copilot for OneDrive files to File Explorer and the OneDrive Activity Center—a new way to make working with your files easier, smarter, and more efficient on your Windows PC. How can you use Copilot for your files? Users can access Copilot features for their files from OneDrive Activity Center We are bringing the power of AI directly into your daily file management experience. With just a few clicks, Copilot can help you summarize lengthy documents, generate an FAQ, compare files, or answer questions about your file. To get started, make sure your files are saved in OneDrive and that you’re signed in with your Microsoft 365 Personal or Family account. File Explorer: simply open File Explorer on your Windows device. When you select a file* stored in OneDrive, right click and hover over OneDrive in the context menu- you’ll notice a new set of Copilot options. OneDrive Activity Center: open the OneDrive Activity Center (OneDrive icon in your taskbar or notification area) and find the file*. Click on More options to access the Copilot actions you can perform on the file. Who can use these features? To access these features, you’ll need a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family account, and your files must be stored in OneDrive to access OneDrive features. They are now available to subscribers, so you can try them today! What can Copilot do with my files? Summarize: generate a concise, easy-to-understand summary of a document’s content. Perfect for when you need a quick refresher or want to decide which file to review in detail. Create an FAQ: puts together a list of “Frequently Asked Questions” related to your document. Ask a question: have a specific question? Just ask Copilot and it will return the answer from your file. Compare files (File Explorer only): creates a concise table highlighting differences between multiple files (up to 5). Tips for Maximizing Your Copilot Experience Keep files in OneDrive. If your files are stored locally or on another service, you can move them to OneDrive for the best experience. Stay signed in. Use your Microsoft 365 Personal or Family account to unlock all Copilot features. If you see Copilot options missing, check your account status and subscription. Try different file types. Copilot actions work with different file types*. Give feedback. We’re always working to improve Copilot. Use the built-in feedback tools to let us know what works well and what you’d like to see in the future. Want to learn about what’s new across OneDrive? Join our digital event on October 8th. To RSVP and get more information, click here. * Supported file types include Microsoft 365 documents (DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLSX, FLUID, LOOP), Universal formats (PDF, TXT, RTF), Web files (HTM, HTML), and OpenDocument formats (ODT, ODP). Photos and videos are not supported at this time.Feature deep dive: Using PDFs in OneDrive and our journey thus far
PDFs are incredibly popular, used for everything from business documents to everyday tasks at home. In fact, over 100 billion PDFs were added to OneDrive and SharePoint in just last year – and its popularity as a file format shows no signs of slowing down. We can bet you’re fans of using PDF’s, and so we’re excited to walk you through everything you can do with this popular file format in OneDrive. Whether you're annotating documents, bookmarking pages, or merging PDF documents, OneDrive offers a robust set of tools to make managing PDFs effortless and efficient. There’s already so many things you can do with your PDF’s whether you’re using OneDrive at home or at work: Freemium PDF features in OneDrive OneDrive for Consumer OneDrive for Business Annotation and markup tools Easily collaborate and share feedback by using digital ink, highlighting text, drawing shapes, and inserting sticky notes directly onto your PDF files. ⚫ ⚫ Bookmark PDF pages Navigate effortlessly through lengthy documents by adding bookmarks to important sections, just like using tabs in a physical book. ⚫ (OneDrive for iOS/iPadOS and Android only.) ⚫ (OneDrive for iOS/iPadOS and Android only.) Change the appearance of your PDF Enhance your reading experience by adjusting the background color of your PDFs to dark mode, sepia mode, or light mode. Ideal for reading in different lighting conditions. ⚫ (OneDrive for Android only.) ⚫ (OneDrive for Android only.) Rotate PDF pages Correct the orientation of scanned documents by rotating individual or multiple pages 90° clockwise. Perfect for fixing upside-down or sideways pages. ⚫ ⚫ Jump to specific PDF page Quickly access specific sections by jumping directly to any page in your PDF documents with just a click. ⚫ ⚫ Display table of content Effortlessly navigate through long documents using the clickable table of contents. ⚫ (Coming soon to OneDrive for web) ⚫ (Coming soon to OneDrive for web) Premium PDF features in OneDrive OneDrive for Consumer [1] OneDrive for Business [2] Extract PDF pages Easily extract specific pages from your PDF documents to create new, smaller files. Ideal for sharing only the most relevant sections. ⚫ ⚫ Merge PDFs Seamlessly combine multiple PDFs into a single, organized document. Perfect for consolidating reports, presentations, and more. ⚫ ⚫ [1] Premium features are available to OneDrive users with M365 Basic, M365 Personal and Family subscriptions. [2] Premium features are accessible to all OneDrive commercial users with SharePoint in their subscription plan. Let’s take a look first at the features that you can use for free on OneDrive. Enhance Collaboration with Annotation and Markup Tools PDFs are used in a variety of collaboration scenarios, and to help, we are releasing new annotation and markup features for easier collaboration. Imagine you’re working on a project with your team, and you need to share feedback or highlight important sections of a PDF. Instead of sending endless emails or starting chats, you can simply use the PDF annotation tools available in OneDrive. These features allow you to use digital, hand-drawn ink, highlight text, draw shapes, and even insert sticky notes directly onto your PDF. The annotations and notes appear on your document when you share them with other colleagues via OneDrive. Here's how you can easily annotate a PDF in OneDrive: Find the PDF you want to annotate in your OneDrive and tap to open it. At the bottom of the screen, tap on Annotation to enter editing mode. Choose an annotation tool from the bottom of the screen or select a drawing markup tool from the top. Change the pen color by tapping on the color picker at the bottom of the screen and choose from any of the preset colors. You can also adjust the thickness and transparency of the ink here. When you're done, just tap Done at the top left of the screen, and then tap Save at the top right, to save your changes back to OneDrive. Now when you share your annotated PDF via OneDrive, your colleagues will see your annotations too. Navigate PDFs Effortlessly with Bookmarks Scrolling through a lengthy PDF document and trying to locate a specific section can be a frustrating experience, right? That's where the PDF bookmark feature is handy. Think of bookmarks in PDFs as your personal navigation tool, much like the tabs you might use in a physical book. They allow you and recipients to easily jump directly to important sections with just a click, making your reading experience smoother and more enjoyable. To use bookmarks: At the bottom of the screen, tap Bookmark to add a bookmark to the current page you’re viewing. After adding a bookmark, you'll see a confirmation dialog at the top of the screen. To view all the pages with bookmarks, tap the Thumbnail icon at the top right of the screen. At the top of the screen, tap Bookmarked to see only the pages with bookmarks. From this view, you can also navigate to a specific page by tapping on it. From the All Pages view, you can select multiple pages to add new bookmarks or remove existing ones. Jump to Specific Sections with Table of Contents Also helping you to more easily navigate a lengthy PDF is OneDrive’s handy Table of Contents feature. When your PDF has an embedded table of contents, OneDrive will display the chapter or section titles along with their page numbers, making it a snap to jump to specific chapters or sections. To view a PDF’s table of contents: If the PDF includes the necessary metadata for a table of contents, you'll see an icon at the top right of the screen. Clicking on it, opens the table of contents. The table of contents with clickable chapters or sections will appear on the left side of the screen. Optimized PDF Viewing with Reading Mode You might have to read a PDF under varying lighting conditions. You can maximize your comfortability and readability of your document by adjusting the Appearance of that PDF. When viewing a PDF in OneDrive, you can adjust the background to dark mode, sepia mode, or light mode, making it easy to read no matter the type of environment. To change the appearance of a PDF: Open a PDF in OneDrive for Android and tap to expand the bottom sheet of the screen. Tap Appearance. In the Appearance window, select the colored circle for day, night, or sepia mode. Adjusting a PDF’s Orientation with Page Rotation With PDF page rotation, you can simply adjust the orientation of any of the pages within a PDF document. This is especially useful for fixing multi-page scanned documents that may have been saved upside down or sideways. With the Rotation feature, you can choose to rotate all pages or just specific ones within your PDF. To rotate a single page: Open the OneDrive iOS or Android app, then open the PDF with the page you want to rotate. Scroll to the page which you want to rotate. Press anywhere there isn’t text. Once a menu pops up, tap Rotate to rotate the page 90 degrees clockwise. To rotate multiple pages: Open the OneDrive iOS or Android app, then open the PDF with the pages you want to rotate. At the top of your screen, tap the grid icon to show a thumbnail view of the PDF’s pages. Tap Select. Tap to select the pages which you want to rotate or tap Select all if you want to rotate them all. Tap the rotate icon on the toolbar along the bottom of your screen to rotate all the selected pages 90 degrees clockwise. Exploring OneDrive’s Premium PDF Features Now that we’ve explored all the free PDF features available, let’s dive into some exciting features available to our M365 Consumer customers with M365 Basic, M365 Personal, or M365 Family, and to our M365 Business customers with SharePoint Premium.. Extract Pages from PDFs For our M365 paid customers, you can easily split a PDF into multiple smaller PDFs using the Extract tool. This makes it simple to pick and separate the pages you need, creating a brand-new (shorter) PDF file in just a snap! How to split a PDF file using the Extract feature on OneDrive for Web: Open the PDF file you want to split. At the top left of the screen, click Extract action Select page(s) to extract then click Extract on top left of the screen. Choose where you’d like to save the new PDF file. You can also rename the file at the bottom of the save dialog then click Save here. When finished, a confirmation dialog appears at the bottom of the screen. This feature also works on OneDrive on iOS, iPadOS, and Android. Here’s how: Open the PDF file you want to split. At the top left of the screen, tap see more button (…) to see the new menu. Select Extract from the menu options. Merge Multiple PDFs While the Extract feature let’s you pick out individual pages from a PDF, the Merge feature lets you easily combine multiple PDF files into a single PDF. It’s a simple as picking the files you want to merge, and voila – you’ve got a brand-new, merged PDF saved directly to your OneDrive or SharePoint Document Library. Here’s how you can easily merge multiple PDF files into one PDF on OneDrive for web: Open one of the PDF files you want to combine in OneDrive for Web. At the top left of the screen, click Merge action. Choose two or more PDF files you want to merge from the merge dialog box. You can drag and drop the files to rearrange their order. Once done, click Next. Choose where you’d like to save the new PDF file. You can also rename the file at the bottom of the save dialog then click Save here. When finished, a confirmation dialog appears at the bottom of the screen. Just like Extract, you can also use Merge on OneDrive on iOS, iPadOS, and Android: Open one of the PDF files you want to combine in OneDrive. At the top left of the screen, tap see more button (…) to see the new menu. Select Merge. Thanks We've been on a focused journey enhancing the PDF features in OneDrive, because we know that for so many of our customers, it’s their file format of choice. We hope you find our new and existing PDF features in OneDrive useful in your life at work or at home. But we don't want to stop here, and we need your feedback to keep improving! Dive into these features, give them a spin, and let us know what you think. What works great? What could be better? And most importantly, what do you want to see next? Drop your comments below or fill this short survey directly. Your insights are invaluable, and together, we can make OneDrive the ultimate tool for all your PDF needs. Happy exploring! 📄✨ About the Author Belle Podeanu is a product manager at Microsoft. She collaborates with Office, Edge, and other platforms to provide comprehensive cross-device functionalities for OneDrive and SharePoint, including productivity features and Copilot-enabled experiences. In her free time, she enjoys playing soul-like games, ARPGs, MMOs, and asymmetrical games. Stay updated on OneDrive and SharePoint news by connecting with Belle here.NOW ON DEMAND | OneDrive Office Hours | May 2025
Are you ready to connect with OneDrive product makers this month? We’re gearing up for the next call. Join the OneDrive product team live each month on our monthly OneDrive Customer Office Hours to hear what's top of mind, get insights into roadmap updates, and dig into a special topic. Each call includes live Q&A where you'll have a chance to ask the OneDrive product team any question about OneDrive - The home of your files. New way to register and watch on-demand! We heard your feedback, and we now have a single destination for all of your Office Hours content. From registration, to watching our previous sessions, you can find it all on our new homepage: Go to: aka.ms/OneDriveOfficeHours to see upcoming session to register, and rewatch previous topics! Save the calendar invite so you never miss a call-https://aka.ms/OfficeHoursCalendar Each call is recorded and made available on demand shortly after. Get ready for our next call Our next call is Wednesday, May 21st, 2025, 8:00am - 9:00am PDT. This month's special topic: "Microsoft 365 Conference Recap & News" with the OneDrive team. We will have our product teams on call ready to answer your questions. Our goal is to simplify the way you create and access the files you need, get the information you are looking for, and manage your tasks efficiently. We can't wait to share, listen, and engage - monthly! Anyone can join this one-hour webinar to ask us questions, share feedback, and learn more about the features we’re releasing soon and our roadmap. Note: Our monthly public calls are not an official support tool. To open support tickets, go to see Get support for Microsoft 365; distinct support for educators and education customers is available, too. Stay up to date on Microsoft OneDrive adoption on adoption.microsoft.com. Join our community to catch all news and insights from the OneDrive community blog. And follow us on Twitter: @OneDrive. Thank you for your interest in making your voice heard and taking your knowledge and depth of OneDrive to the next level. You can ask questions and provide feedback in the event Comments below and we will do our best to address what we can during the call. 😎 Register and join live: aka.ms/OneDriveOfficeHours.Improved Filename and External Drive Support for OneDrive Mac
In early 2022, we launched a new Files- On-Demand experience for macOS, enhancing OS integration and support for new features like Known-Folder-Move (KFM). Since then, we’ve continued to refine this experience further, and today we’re excited to share two new features just for our Mac users! Syncing Special Characters OneDrive for Mac users can now create files that contain any of these special characters: "*:<>?/\| We know that this has been a pain point for our Mac user community, and we’re pleased to share that the latest version of OneDrive for Mac now supports them! Such files will sync to the cloud automatically, with no renames required by you. New or existing files with these characters in the filename will automatically sync to the cloud after you receive the Sync App update of 24.206 or later. On a Mac, these characters will appear as you entered them in Finder as well as in other applications. Windows, iOS, Android, and web endpoints will show them in their HTML-encoded form (e.g. * for “*”), so a file named “Hello * World.txt” on your Mac will show up as “Hello * World.txt” on your PC. You can rename these files on another device too, and the special characters will be preserved on your Mac. Syncing to an External (Non-Home) Drive Previously, if you chose a path outside your home volume for OneDrive, your files would reside on your home volume, with the external drive serving as a cache. Now, when setting up OneDrive Sync in the first run experience, you can click ‘Change Location’ and select a non-home volume path, and it will place all your OneDrive content on that drive. Only a small amount of state is kept on your home volume, and this does not include your file data. With this experience, you can finally take full advantage of syncing to any drive you choose without using up space on your home volume! To take advantage of this new experience, there are a few requirements your Mac and external volume must meet: You must be running macOS 15.0 or later. You must be running OneDrive 25.004 or later. You must be in the Insiders ring. Your external volume must meet the following requirements: Non-removable/non-ejectable, as understood by macOS Formatted for APFS Protected by FileVault Not read-only, a network drive, or marked as quarantined by macOS Important: If you are already syncing OneDrive, you must first unlink and relink on the external drive to take advantage of this new experience. Update: OneDrive for Mac now supports removable drives Filename FAQ Will any special character sync this way? No. Only the characters identified above will sync as-is. If you have other disallowed characters in filenames, you’ll need to rename them. Note that on a Mac, the “/” character shown in Finder is represented in the file system as “:”, so depending on where you view your file names you may see something different. What happens to filenames that already have an HTML-encoded character of this type in them? We’ll sync them to your Mac in their familiar name. That is, if you have a file named “Hello : World.txt” already syncing, it will sync to your Mac as “Hello : World.txt”. Note that we will only apply a familiar name for the characters listed above. Arbitrary HTML-encoded characters will not be renamed. Decimal-encoded characters will not be renamed. What happens when I search for files containing one of these characters? Since the files on your Mac have these characters in them, you can search for them in Spotlight or similar as you would any other character. On the web, you can also search for these files as they appear on your Mac; the web will discard these characters but should return the correct result. On other endpoints, search behavior may vary. Why Mac only? We are exploring options on other platforms but wanted to prioritize our Mac customers first because these characters are allowed into the native filesystem, whereas on other platforms these characters are not allowed. Will this ever come to Windows? These special characters are illegal in filenames on Windows, so we don’t have plans to bring this to Windows at this time. On Windows, you’ll see them in their HTML-encoded forms in both the file system and in OneDrive’s activity center and other UI. Can an admin opt out of this experience for their users? Admins can opt-out of this feature by setting the “DisableNameMangling” default to YES. Remove this value to opt back in. External Drive FAQ What will the experience be on macOS versions older than 15.0? Users on these versions of macOS will get the previous experience, where the external drive is used as a cache and your files reside on the home volume. How can I know if I’m using the new experience? Your sync root will be on your external drive, not in ~/Library/CloudStorage. Are there behavior differences between the new and old experience? The new external drive sync experience works just like it does if you select your home drive. Why is FileVault a requirement? This is a system requirement of macOS. Are removable drives supported? OneDrive doesn’t support syncing to any drive that macOS thinks can be ejected. About Jack Jack Nichols is a Principal Software Architect on the OneDrive team and owns engineering for OneDrive for macOS.
