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 and SharePoint at Microsoft Ignite 2025: What to Expect
Next week Microsoft Ignite 2025 lands in San Francisco’s Moscone Center for the first time! Bringing a wave of innovation that’s reshaping the industry for AI-driven content management, secure collaboration, and seamless digital experiences.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.NOW ON DEMAND| OneDrive Office Hours | June 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. 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, June 18th, 2025, 8:00am - 9:00am PDT. This month's special topic: "Add to OneDrive & Shortcut Enhancements" with the Kayla Ngan and Lesha Bhansali. 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.Unlicensed OneDrive user accounts: What you need to know
We are approaching the start date of when the new policy for unlicensed OneDrive user accounts is taking place. We want to give some updates on what to expect, when to expect them, and what actions you can take to ensure a smooth transition. To enhance security, compliance, and storage management this change will help organizations optimize storage, streamline account management, and ensure data security. What is happening? Beginning on Jan 27th, 2025, any OneDrive user accounts that have been unlicensed for longer than 93 days will be inaccessible to admins and end users. Accounts become unlicensed when the admin removes the license, or the user is deleted from Entra ID. How does an account get unlicensed? When an account becomes unlicensed, it means that the user no longer has a valid license associated with their account. This can happen for various reasons, such as the expiration of a subscription, the removal of a license by an admin, or changes in the organization's licensing agreements. These accounts will be automatically archived and will still be viewable via admin tools but will not be accessible until admins take action on them. One example of this is if a OneDrive account became unlicensed on August 1st, 2025, this account will be inaccessible as of Oct 1st, 2025. In some scenarios, users with the necessary permissions can access SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business resources without a license. Do admins get notified ahead of time when an account is going to be unlicensed? Yes, admins are notified ahead of time when user accounts are about to become unlicensed in OneDrive. Here are the key points: Notification Timeline: Admins receive notifications about unlicensed OneDrive accounts through the Microsoft 365 Message Center. Message Center Updates: For example, a Message Center post (MC836942) informs admins about the changes to storage policies for unlicensed OneDrive accounts. Preparation Steps: Admins are advised to review existing retention policies, move actively used data to licensed accounts or SharePoint sites, and enable billing for archived unlicensed OneDrive accounts. These steps help ensure a smooth transition and minimize disruptions Reports and Monitoring: Admins can generate reports on unlicensed OneDrive accounts using the SharePoint admin center. These reports provide details such as the number of unlicensed accounts, storage used, and reasons for unlicensing) By following these notifications and preparation steps, admins can effectively manage unlicensed OneDrive accounts and ensure compliance with organizational policies. What is the impact for administrators? Beginning on January 27th, 2025, admins will have three options for managing unlicensed OneDrive accounts: Setting up the Archive billing for unlicensed accounts to be able to access and edit the archived files. Delete the unlicensed OneDrive account, if it does not have a retention policy applied to it. Re-license the unlicensed account to maintain access. All purview features work with archived unlicensed OneDrive accounts, including retention policies, legal holds, and eDiscovery search & export. When accounts become unlicensed, they are automatically archived. Admins must enable unlicensed account billing in the Microsoft 365 admin center to access the files. There is a fee of $0.05/GB/Month to store unlicensed accounts in Microsoft 365 Archive, and A fee of $0.60/GB to reactivate accounts stored in Microsoft 365 Archive. When OneDrive accounts become unlicensed, there are some costs to be aware of that were not present previously. Here's what you need to know: Storage Fees: Archived unlicensed accounts now incur a storage fee of $0.05 per GB per month. Reactivation Costs: Reactivating an archived account costs $0.60 per GB, providing 30-day access. Operational Expenses: Managing unlicensed accounts involves additional administrative tasks and costs. Compliance and Security: Properly archiving and billing unlicensed accounts helps mitigate security and compliance risk. Reactivating an account takes up to 24 hours and grants 30-day access, after which the account is archived again. If a OneDrive account is unlicensed for over 93 days with no action, it stays inaccessible unless an Azure subscription is set up and unlicensed billing is enabled in the SharePoint admin center. Note: This will not affect tenants who have not changed the default tenant retention settings. How to get a list of unlicensed accounts Admins can find a list of unlicensed accounts by going to the SharePoint admin center>Reports>OneDrive accounts. This will display how many accounts are unlicensed and the reason why out of the possibilities: Retention period – Account is no longer licensed but is still active because a retention period setting is keeping the account from being deleted. Retention policy – Account is no longer licensed but is still active because a retention policy in Purview is keeping the account from being deleted. Active user with no license – Account is active but is not licensed. This can arise if the license is removed but the user is not removed from Entra IDAAD. Duplicate accounts – Account is a duplicate because a licensed user has multiple OneDrive accounts associated with them. Duplicate accounts (also known as non-primary accounts) may arise if a user has geographic move, or if a user leaves and then rejoins an organization, or it may arise from other factors. How to access inaccessible accounts If admins want to access the data of the now inaccessible unlicensed OneDrive account, they must do the following prerequisites to set up Microsoft 365 Archive : Set up and link Azure subscription in Syntex pay-as-you-go . Must have Global admin or SharePoint admin permissions. Enable Microsoft 365 Archive Unlicensed Account billing (billing is available starting December 2024). If a OneDrive account stays unlicensed for longer than 93 days, the account becomes inaccessible until you fulfill the prerequisites. How does this affect EDU Tenants? These changes don't apply to Education tenants, which have over 50% education licenses. Tenants with fewer than 50% education licenses are considered commercial. Unlicensed OneDrive accounts use pooled storage and can cause security and compliance issues. OneDrive accounts can become unlicensed if the user is deleted from Entra ID but the account is kept due to retention policies, or if the user stays in Entra ID without a valid license. Examples include alumni accounts moving to a free Exchange Online for Alumni license or duplicate accounts. EDU Admin tenants can find unlicensed OneDrive accounts in the SharePoint admin center under Reports > OneDrive accounts. The report shows why accounts are unlicensed, the number of accounts, and storage used. We understand that changes like these can be challenging, and we want to assure you have as many resources as possible. Our goal is to make this transition as smooth as possible, and implementing these updates, we aim to enhance security, compliance, and storage management, ultimately providing a better experience for everyone. Additional resources: Manage unlicensed OneDrive user accounts - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn Quick Start Guide OneDrive Office Hours-Unlicensed OneDrive User Accounts Sync Up Podcast- Unlicensed accounts at 19:56
