Saving files to OneDrive for Business from a Mac

About this article

This article includes instructions for saving files to your Microsoft OneDrive for Business cloud storage. It's intended for students and employees using a Mac laptop.

What's OneDrive for Business?

Microsoft OneDrive for Business is our "cloud storage" solution at WSU, which is a fancy way of saying that you all have 1 TB of storage on off-campus servers owned by Microsoft. You can upload files from your laptop or tablet to your OneDrive for Business and work on those files directly using Microsoft Office applications. This is a great option for safeguarding your files if your devices should ever fail or need to be exchanged. By default, any file you upload to your OneDrive for Business cannot be accessed by any other user unless you decide to share it. Since you can now share files using OneDrive for Business, you should never store private data here (more on data security). OneDrive for Business is much more than just cloud storage and we encourage you to learn more this powerful tool.

How to save files to your OneDrive for Business

• NOTE: You cannot save or upload files with file names that contain special characters. These characters include " * : < > ? / \ |. You will have to rename existing files before you upload to OneDrive.
• Login to your OneDrive account.
• Create and/or open a folder in which to upload files. To create a folder, select New then Folder (Figure 1). Give the folder a name and select Create.
• Open that OneDrive for Business folder by selecting it

• Select Upload, find the file on your computer, and then select Open
• You can also drag-and-drop files from the Finder window to the OneDrive for Business window, the Drop here... will show up. See Figure 2

Pro tips

• You cannot upload folders to OneDrive for Business directly. You first need to create folders in OneDrive and then upload files to them.
• There are some useful keyboard shortcuts when selecting multiple files to drag-and-drop: Ctrl+A (select all items), Shift+Left Click (selects all items between two nonadjacent items), Control+Left Click (selects specific nonadjacent items0.