Page 248 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

has limited storage space. You still see them listed on your machine—but

they don’t actually download until you ask for them.

Your drive holds 5 gigabytes of files for free. (It used to be 15 gigs—and
you could earn more storage by, for example, referring friends—but, sadly,
Microsoft’s accountants prevailed.) You can pay extra for more space: $2 a

month for 50 gigs, $4 for 200 gigs, $7 for 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabytes), or
$10 for 5 terabytes.

Putting Files onto OneDrive

On the PC, you use OneDrive just as you would a folder or a flash drive.
Click its name in the navigation pane to see what’s in there. Drag files into
its window, or onto its name, to copy them there. Make folders, add files,

delete files, rename them—whatever. Any changes you make are reflected
on your other computers, phones, and tablets within seconds.

Inside a program, you can choose File → Save in the usual way. When the

Save box appears, click OneDrive in the navigation pane. Or choose a
OneDrive folder’s name, if you’ve made one.

Offline Files

Ordinarily, the files you’ve put onto your OneDrive aren’t only online.
Windows also maintains a copy of them on your computer.

That’s handy, of course, because it means you can open and edit them even

when you don’t have an internet connection. (Next time you’re online,
Windows automatically transmits the changes you made to the OneDrive
copy of the file—and onto all other machines you use to sign in with the

same account.)

But there’s a problem with this scenario: You can’t use your OneDrive to
offload big files you don’t want on your computer. You can’t use it to

archive files, freeing up room on your PC’s drive. Fortunately, there’s also a
solution. See Figure 3-16.