Skydrive

Skydrive is Microsoft’s on-line storage. A drive in the sky. Like Dropbox you can store files there and share them via the web. However Skydrive is more than just an on-line storage space. With Skydrive you also have Web Apps. These are very powerful as you now have the full editing capability of Microsoft Office right there in your Skydrive!

Folder Shortcut

You can create a folder structure just like on your computer and you can have a shortcut to your Skydrive on your computer just like Dropbox.

However that is where the similarity ends. Open up a document on the web from your Skydrive and you can edit it there and then!!  I work with a VA who is in a different town. We use Skydrive to collaborate on documents. No more emailing of documents to each other. We simply save the document in the Skydrive and let the other person know it is there.

Getting to your files

You can get to your files via the shortcut on your computer or via Skydrive on the web.  Simply open up the document from the folder on your computer, make your changes and save it. Or open it on the web in your web browser, make your changes and save. That is all there is to it!

Windows 8 and Office 2013

With Windows 8 you can now connect your computer or laptop to your Skydrive account so that you can save to it directly.  This is very clever!  Office 2013 is now in preview and you can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/officepreview to test it out.

Skydrive also has Mail, Calendar and People and these are subjects for another blog entirely!

Look out for my blogs over the next few weeks as we explore ways of working collaboratively on the web.

Till next time…