Microsoft offers offline support on the web so that users with business and education plans can access their files on the OneDrive cloud storage service without an internet connection. explained.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated the features that OneDrive web users can use in offline mode without an internet connection as follows:
- Open and interact with OneDrive’s “Home,” “My Files,” “Shared,” “Favorites,” “Contacts,” and “Meeting” views be found.
- View your folders, filenames, and metadata like file owner, size, recent activity, last open date, and more.
- Use the “My Files” view of OneDrive Web to rename, sort, move or copy files, and this will change when you re-establish internet connection. The OneDrive of Changes Make sure it syncs with yours.
- Open, edit, and save locally stored Office files and non-Office files (files marked “available offline”) in their native applications.
Additionally, if you have an online connection while using OneDrive, the new offline mode will offer the following benefits:
- You can designate files or folders as available for offline access directly from OneDrive for the web.
- You can free up local storage by simply making your local files or folders available online directly from OneDrive for the Web.
- You’ll experience up to 3x faster loading times when viewing and interacting with your files in OneDrive in your browser and the OneDrive app in Microsoft Teams and Outlook.
The new features work with your local built-in storage on your computer to store information such as file names, sizes, authors of the files, and more. To access the new mode, you need to have the OneDrive Sync application installed on your Windows or Mac PC. Then all you have to do is log in to the OneDrive web app and do a one-time setup to get it ready for offline mode.
Additionally, the OneDrive Optional Files feature can now work with the web version. Microsoft says this now allows users to set OneDrive files to be available offline at any time on the PC. This can also be used to set files to be available online only.
