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Since we launched the Outlook.com preview two weeks ago, we have been truly humbled by the reception. We’ve received hundreds of great comments, participated in thousands of threads on @reddit, @gizmodo, @neowin and are excited to share that, as of today, more than 10 million people have signed up and started using Outlook.com. Today, we’re updating SkyDrive with a new, more modern web design, refined SkyDrive apps for PCs and Macs, a new SkyDrive app for Android devices, and improved developer offerings. While there’s always more to do to improve our products, these updates bring SkyDrive out of preview and ready for a billion users – in time for the upcoming releases of Windows 8, the new Outlook.com, and the new Office. The rest of this post is authored by Omar Shahine and Mike Torres, group program managers for SkyDrive. - Chris Jones
Since we launched the Outlook.com preview two weeks ago, we have been truly humbled by the reception. We’ve received hundreds of great comments, participated in thousands of threads on @reddit, @gizmodo, @neowin and are excited to share that, as of today, more than 10 million people have signed up and started using Outlook.com.
Today, we’re updating SkyDrive with a new, more modern web design, refined SkyDrive apps for PCs and Macs, a new SkyDrive app for Android devices, and improved developer offerings. While there’s always more to do to improve our products, these updates bring SkyDrive out of preview and ready for a billion users – in time for the upcoming releases of Windows 8, the new Outlook.com, and the new Office. The rest of this post is authored by Omar Shahine and Mike Torres, group program managers for SkyDrive.
- Chris Jones
Over the past months, we’ve shared our approach to building versatile personal cloud storage that can scale to a billion people. Today, we’re excited to announce the next step towards that vision, and how this brings the SkyDrive desktop apps out of preview:
With these updates and continued improvements to our back-end infrastructure, we’re excited to leave preview and unlock new possibilities for a billion customers with the upcoming releases of Windows 8, the new Office, and tons of devices and apps that connect to SkyDrive.
Why is versatility in cloud storage so important? We believe that your files are not just bits to be synced—and they're certainly not to be scanned to serve advertising. Your files represent possibilities. The unfinished term paper that stands between you and graduation. The family vacation pictures that may find their way into a photo book for your grandparents. The brilliant (or not so brilliant) business plan ideas that you jotted down at the coffee shop. For each person, the possibilities are different. And so is how you capture, organize, access and share across devices and apps. If you're a student, you might organize homework and notes from each class into subfolders. If you're a real estate agent, you might keep photo slide shows and documents for each listing together. Or maybe you’d rather just see your recent Office docs or camera roll without worrying about files and folders.
And when it comes to the devices you choose for work (or play), you might be a journalist who's inspired to write (at home or work) using Word on your Windows PC or Mac. But when you’re out on assignment, you may only have your phone to take notes on, and an Internet café to finish your write-up and share it.
We think personal cloud storage should create new possibilities, not limit them. So no matter who you are, or what you do, we’ve designed the new SkyDrive for you.
As you've seen with the preview of Outlook.com, we're bringing a fresh approach to how we design our web experiences. With the update to SkyDrive.com that's rolling out over the next 24 hours, we've taken the same DNA from the SkyDrive Windows 8 app and brought that to the web. We've updated nearly 100% of the SkyDrive UI to provide a fast and fluid web experience on all browsers and devices.
It all starts with the SkyDrive home page, where we now default to a tile-based layout of your folders and files.
However, some of you prefer the details view, and that’s just a click away (details view is also the default view for Recent docs and Shared).
In addition to the new design, we’re introducing a bunch of new features.
You can now quickly search for a file anywhere in your SkyDrive, including the content of Office documents such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
For example, here is a search I did in my SkyDrive for documents and photos of “Olympics.”
With this update to SkyDrive, we simplified how you interact with your stuff, by moving many of the common commands into the toolbar at the top of the page. For example, creating folders and docs, sharing, and common file operations are more easily available.
Folder operations:
File operations:
Now you can select multiple files in thumbnail view, rearrange your photos the way you want, and drag and drop files and folders.
We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on sorting over the past year, and we’re happy to provide quite a few new sorting options.
As many of you know, Windows Phone users can have all the photos they take on their phones automatically sent to the SkyDrive camera roll folder. I have 1411 photos in this folder, and it used to be a pain to get to the most recent photo. We now default to sorting by newest to oldest, which should make viewing your camera roll much better.
Similarly we introduced a feature that allows you to customize and save the sort order for any folder
And we’ve built rearrange directly into the viewing experience so that you don’t have to navigate away from your photos to arrange them the way that you want.
With this update, which will gradually roll out over the course of the week, we’ve made SkyDrive faster and more efficient for a couple of key scenarios, based on your feedback. We focused on photo uploads and looking for changes in your local SkyDrive folder. As with any performance discussion, “your mileage may vary,” as actual performance depends on a variety of factors including hardware, connection upload/download speed, network congestion, content type, distance to the service data center, and other factors.
You love syncing your photos to SkyDrive. After any great event, you end up with a bunch of new photos you want to share with your friends and family. So, we streamlined the photo upload path resulting in a faster bulk photo upload experience. Using an example from my home PC, I tried out a before and after with the 388 photos I had on my camera. I dragged these photos into my SkyDrive folder, let them sync, and measured the completion time before and after the change. In this case, the photos uploaded 1.7 times faster with the update.
When you add files or make changes in your local SkyDrive, you want them picked up quickly for upload without impacting other apps on your device. If you have a lot of files or older hardware, this can take time. So, we focused on minimizing CPU time while looking for changes, which has significantly reduced the total work that we do on every scan—meaning a much faster sync experience and more time for your CPU to tackle its other tasks. For this one, I synced about 40,000 files and restarted SkyDrive to kick off a full scan. As it started up, I measured the total CPU time of the scanner before and after the change. In this case, we were able to reduce the total CPU time by 165 seconds.
For a visual example of the performance improvement, take a look at the following charts. And remember that actual performance does depend on a number of factors and everyone’s setup is different.
We’ve heard feedback that some people would like to specify which folders in their SkyDrive sync to their PC. This can be due to space constraints on their laptop or tablet, or because they don’t want personal files syncing to their work PC. We’re working on a solution to this problem but can’t give specifics yet—stay tuned!
Back in December 2011 we released the original versions of our SkyDrive apps for Windows Phone and iPhone. Since December, almost 4 million people have used our mobile apps to access their SkyDrive from their mobile phone—and we’ve released a number of feature updates as well as fixes and improvements over that time.
Today, as part of making sure SkyDrive is available to all Windows customers, we’re excited to announce that an official SkyDrive app for Android phones will be available in just a few weeks. The Android app is similar to our mobile apps for Windows Phone and iOS and allows you to browse your SkyDrive, upload files to SkyDrive, as well as share SkyDrive files with “Send a link.” You'll also be able to open SkyDrive files from other apps, as well as upload, save, and share to SkyDrive from other apps.
Watch our Twitter feed (@SkyDrive) for a notification when the app becomes available in a few weeks!
It’s been almost a year since we first announced the revamped developer platform for working with SkyDrive which made it easier to integrate SkyDrive into mobile and web apps. Since then we’ve gotten consistent feedback on two key places where we could improve our developer story.
With these changes we’ve addressed a few of the top items of feedback from our developer community and can’t wait to see the interesting innovations that our customers will get to enjoy, now that this functionality is available. We’ll cover these changes in more detail in a follow-up blog post.
As always, we hope you enjoy all the updates and improvements to SkyDrive across the web, desktop, mobile, and developer support. And keep the feedback coming!
-- Omar Shahine, Group Program Manager, SkyDrive.com Mike Torres, Group Program Manager, SkyDrive apps
question 1: awesome! love skydrive, how do I get the new one ????? :)
question 2: why do I have to register a new account to comment on this blog???? have you ever heared of Windows Live ID Web Authentication??? :)
ah, I see, I have to wait 24 hours :) not sure I can...
Fantastic! I can't wait to try it out for myself.
While I don't need to choose what to sync personally, it's good that you'll have that option in the future. It would also be great if you could sync files shared with you, although that might get a bit more complex.
Finally for Android!! Ugh, have to wait a few weeks... :(
Awesome, thanks for the heads-up! SkyDrive just got even better.
Essential feature requests:
1. The API urgently needs to support uploading of raw photos, without compressing the image. This feature exists on the website but has always been missing from the API (and hence all third-party apps).
2. The search feature needs to be able to find any file by its filename and any folder by its folder name. Serious SkyDrive users with huge filesystems otherwise struggle to find their files.
sorting: for some reason the order of my photo folders are messed up in the old design: 2011, 1994, 2006, 2012 etc. i have no clue why.
what's synced and what's not: actually i would like to be able to tell skydrive to only sync photos in a folder and not videos. another solution would be to use a sub.folder for the videos and tell skydrive not to sync that specific folder.
android app: i know there aren't many android 1.6 users left, but i'm stuck with it. it would be great if there was an android app for users like me as well. although i realise that might be a lot to ask to make a smart and a not so smart app for the android - although some companies have actually done that.
and finally: great job guys and girls. i immediately switched from gmail when i've seen the new outlook design. can't wait for the skype implementation. and skydrive is so far the only cloud thingy that actually works for me.
@Tim Acheson both issues are addressed in this release.
Looks very nice!
I was impressed by the new outlook.com. The 'Mail/outlook'and 'People/adress book' look very nice, and im glad to see that you guys are working on Skydrive aswell. I hope that the Agenda will follow!
Great job
I like the way things are moving! Looking forward to the updated SkyDrive (then I assume Calendar is next)!
Awesome! Glad to see this update! Any chance of getting a better Symbian app though? Would really benefit those PureView and N8 users out there.
Great job guys! Quick question: When will Skydrive app for Windows desktop and OSX get ability to manually pause/resume syncing? Would LOVE for ability to do that (ala Dropbox). Great for situations where you're in limited bandwidth environments (i.e. Starbucks)
I've been waiting for this and for an updated calendar since Outlook.com was announced. The new Skydrive looks great!
Is the Windows Phone 7 app going to be updated again in the light of this changes?
An Android app sound cool too, as most of my friends use Android devices.
Awesome new ui and thanks for the Android app!
Nice work. Any update on bringing Live Mesh features to Skydrive in the future? (offline sync, local transfert, infinite storage offline for free, ...)
Wow, guys, this is truly fantastic! I've always been an avid Microsoft-supporter, but I'm so impressed at the work you guys are doing to truly unify the experiences this time around. The work with SkyDrive is nothing short of amazing in such a short time. Thank you!
Though I have always thought SkyDrive is great, I've been content with Live Mesh.
Seeing the various updates to SkyDrive that have been coming, I can see myself using it a lot more and I think it is a great thing that you can access it right from your desktop. However, what I would really like to see is the ability to share folders to SkyDrive from different places on your hard-drive without dragging them into the SkyDrive folder. I am really organised and have folders arranged in particular ways. And there are some folders I do not wish to add to SkyDrive but sub-folders that I do. This wasn't there in the initial version of the app I downloaded.
Secondly, I use remote desktop a lot on Mesh a lot. There are programs on my uni computer that I just can't afford or it is impractical for me to have at home, so I just use Mesh to overcome that problem. Is this remote desktop option available in SkyDrive?
Thanks!
And keep up the good work.
An official Android app was the only thing holding me back from using SkyDrive. Thanks for all the hard work!
Huge fan of SkyDrive and I can't wait to try the new one! One small request, though. Can they update the home screen icon on iOS to the new logo? The old logo was ugly and boring but we're still stuck with it. Thanks!!
Please, now that apps can save arbitrary files onto SkyDrive, could there be a Program Data folder that stops apps barfing data all over the place? I know it's a hidden area for W8 and WP8 apps, but WP7 apps just dump folders at the top level and I assume Android and iOS apps would do the same.
@cobrachilde look at folder junctions and symlinks; it would be delightful to have a built-in UI for setting these up.
Related request/feedback: Before Skydrive comes out could you fix the way Microsoft apps use AccountManager on Android so you don't have to sign in seperately for each one? At the moment they all create/register under a "Windows Live" account*, but you still have to manually enter the sign in information for each one, instead of getting a native "wants to access your Windows live account" dialog.
A minor change, but the easier set up would get more people using the apps in the first place, so you'd get a greater pool of potential people considering switching over to the Microsoft ecosystem - which I assume was your reason for supporting Android in the first place ;).
*Name/Icon should be updated to Microsoft account shouldn't it?
I love the new Skydrive UI from what I can see on the videoes..
One question: Will you ever add the possibility to sync with iPhoto on Macbook's? I have a lot of pictures, and I would love seeing them being automatically synced once in a while with Skydrive! iCloud is not really helping me.. and it is way to expensive compared to what you get.
Great Job Microsoft! the best keeps getting better! first Hotmail, now this! :D
Will the new APIs allow devs to download previews of the images, for example in Twitter apps?
Great work guys! Keep it up!
Now the only thing is missing is the unlimited storage for Pictures similar to what Google is offering with Picasa. Unlimited Storage for all photos so I can completely switch over.
This is getting better, but this is no where near done until all of the Live Mesh functionality is brought forward into SkyDrive - I want the ability to choose what folders I sync, where I place the folders I sync and whether they just sync computer-computer or whether I want to include skydrive or not. I want the easy ability to share these sync folders with others and I want the 'what's new/comment' area in the folder that was present in the old school (prior to the current on MS is trying to toss out, that had its name changed from Sync to Mesh). As well, the remote piece was nice.
While I like where this seems to be going, I'm getting tired of good functionality / applications going bye bye to make way for something new that is usually only half baked. Live Mesh + SkyDrive made the MS stack for cloud storage the best. Let's please ensure it stays that way by moving all of Mesh's features, flexibility and awesomness over. And whoever was in charge of that installer which updated Movie Maker/Picture Gallery, but sneakily removed Mesh without any GUI based warning - shame on you. Never ever remove something from a user's system withouth having a big "WARNING - this next step will REMOVE" screen. That's sneaky, spyware like traits....
Thanks for the follow up about choosing what you sync.
Any news on shared files sync (please this one is very important!!!), folder from Windows Live Groups sync, p2p sync, arbitrary folder sync?
Everything looks amazing, I wish we could have two more features Version control of file and recycle bin for deleted files.
For those who want to have your files synced to SkyDrive automatically (and are less concerned about the quantity of files), you can do that already by remapping some of your "special" folders in Windows. For example:
Sync "Documents" with SkyDrive Automatically
1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C: drive, Users folder, and then YOURUSERNAME.
2. Right click on the DOCUMENTS folder and choose PROPERTIES.
3. Click the LOCATION tab.
4. Change the path to move it into your SkyDrive folder, for example C:\Users\GoodThings2Life\SkyDrive\Documents
5. Click OK, and click YES to move your existing files.
Obviously this may take some time depending the amount of data you're moving, so be patient. From now on, all of your files will be SYNCHRONIZED with SkyDrive automatically. Note that files are always still available "Offline" as well when you do this.
Just be careful adding SkyDrive app to other computers... it will sync ALL of the files to those PC's as well... at least until Microsoft fixes it so that we can pick what syncs.
@JonoFezz ... If you READ the entire blog post, you'd notice that they addressed this. It is something they are working on but aren't ready to release yet. Be patient. :)
What a step back in terms of functionality ....
I was SO looking forward to Live Mesh (and earlier Live Sync) being combined with Skydrive. I was a big user and fan of both those products, but after Windows Live Essentials 2012 replaces Live Mesh with the Skydrive app, I have to give up on Skydrive AND Live Mesh. No longer any peer2peer synching ... no longer choosing which folders on my system to sync. (I know you can do a mklink /J to Junction a symbol link), but on storage strapped SSD's there might not be room for all the folders on all my machines / devices.
And now only 7 GB free? (I was below the 4GB?) limit of Skydrive when they upgraded so lost out on the automatic 25GB upgrade...
So in my view, This Skydrive/Windows Live Essentials upgrade killed off all the good things about the Microsoft cloud offering ...
I've moved on to using my Google Drive account. 80 GB for 20 USD/year that I was trying out. I still cant choose what folders to sync, but now where I have to synch everything, this is the best and cheapest offering.
And I am not going to pay for storage at a company that keeps cutting functionality from it's offerings.... No knowing where they will end up....
I work as a .NET and BizTalk/Azure developer, so I use almost all of Microsoft's software, and have earlier recommended and preferred the Live Mesh stuff to friends family and other geeks... Oh boy ... what a disappointment from Microsoft.
why still no selective search? Sorry without this feature the tool is useless.
The new SkyDrive looks great, but I want it now!
It's great to know that you are working on “choosing what to sync”, I do hope selecting shared folders is included in this.
I side note about the new (formerly know as) metro style pages. I do hope the calendar will get updated soon, and all pages under "Microsoft account" has no drop down menu (meaning no way to get to Mail, People other without typing in the address. There is no settings button (for help, feedback) and no IM button. And on the account.live.com page there should be drop down arrows (like in the picture in this article for Groups and PC's). I have no idea how to get to my aliases without a direct link.
Anyway, great work and don't stop now.
Very pleased with developments. Since buying a Nokia Lumia mobile, I was impressed with the Windows operating system and the integration with People/Social Networking/Skydrive etc. Whilst there is room for further improvements, the progress so far is both pleasing and welcome. Keep it up please.
I like the new look, however, why at the present moment I cannot remove old computer names from skydrive and hotmail.
How much free space? I think I currently have 25 on my Hotmail. How much will I get with my Outlook? I'll need to merge these I think... (Want to dump my Hotmail address)
@smnbss - we've got that coming - stay tuned! :-)
Does that mean you'll make it so my Windows Phone will upload full res images over WIFI, instead of lower? That, and letting me pick the folders I want to sync were the top 2 features I was waiting on. The new web UI looks awesome though.
Love it :). Very clean and seems much faster!
My only (slight) complaint is the removal of the Documents/Photos filter which was down the left hand side of the old SkyDrive allowing me to quickly view either JUST photo-type folders or document-type folders. For years, I've been uploading photo albums to SkyDrive using Windows (Live) Photo Gallery which, by default, uploads album to the root of SkyDrive - with the old SkyDrive, it wasn't an issue as I could quickly switch to my document folders - now it's a bit of a pain - I either have to scoll down and keep scrolling (I have a lot of albums!) to get to my document folders, or manually search for a folder name.
Any chance of restoring the Photo/Documents filter? Or perhaps adding it up the top under a "View" dropdown...
That's my only wish/complaint. Otherwise, it's better (and faster) in every way. Good job! :)
From the Android app screenshots it looks like Microsoft has perfectly matched its new Modern UI and the general Android style guidelines. Really great!
@Tim Acheson
The API now supports uploading files without having them resized. SkyDrive automatically attempts to shrink it to fit within this 2048 × 2048-pixel size constraint. To override this behavior, set the downsize_photo_uploads query-string parameter to false—for example, /FOLDER_ID/files?downsize_photo_uploads=false when uploading using HTTP POST requests or /FOLDER_ID/files/FILENAME?downsize_photo_uploads=false when using HTTP PUT requests.
@YashMaheshwari
To display a preview of an item in SkyDrive, make a GET request to /skydrive/get_item_preview?type=TYPE&url=URL. The optional type query-string parameter is one of the following: thumbnail, small (to get a maximum 100 × 100-pixel preview), album (maximum 200 × 200), or normal (maximum 800 × 800). The required url query-string parameter is a shared link to the item in SkyDrive.
Can't you make this so you can select folders on your hard drive to synch to Skydrive.com? Rather ethan have to copy everything into the desktop Skydrive folder?
Rockin' !!!!!!!!!! Hoping we see these types of style changes with Windows Live Messenger and Skype! VERY NICE!!!!
I have always tried to push SkyDrive over Dropbox, even in the days when SkyDrive just couldn't touch Dropbox from a Windows Explorer integration perspective.
Unless I am still to get the latest update, I am saddened to see there is still a feature missing which both I, and several friends who I am trying to convert from Dropbox would like to see (that Dropbox has), the combining of shared and owned folders (or even just exposing shared folders in the Windows client).
In Dropbox if I share a folder with somebody, once they accept the share, the shared folder just appears in their list of Dropbox folders, meaning they can access our shared folder just as easily as their own. From what I can tell this is not possible in SkyDrive, and this is a *big* negative to anybody who wants to use SkyDrive for collaboration beyond office documents.
While you are taking notes ;-) I would love a right-click context sensitive option to be able to share a folder directly from the Windows client without having to drop out to the web client (as Dropbox can do).
If there is a conscious business decision behind these "shortcomings" then I would love to hear it so I can share it with those I am trying to move off Dropbox. I know I keep referring to Dropbox, but to be honest, it is the defacto standard out there for collaborative file sharing, so if nothing else you really need to match their core or popular functionality... IMHO.
Oh, and if you could run that promo again whereby people could get a free upgrade to 25GB of space, that would be a sweet enticement ;-)
I don't need the new SkyDrive Android app that much. I'd rather have an Android app for Outlook. Any news on that? I don't like the current (ugly) Hotmail app.
I've used Skydrive a year or so and enjoyed it. 25 gigs of space easily beat out other free cloud storage. Now the new "improved" version gives me 7 gigs.........guess it's time to switch out to the other services that now offer more than skydrive.....a shame......
1st) After so many years waiting for skydrive to shine, it's really gratifying to see that "we are almost there".
2nd) Still using Mesh though, and didn't like the "backdoor uninstall through Windows Essentials 2012" manouver (that was dirty). Yet I've also been using the skydrive app since day 1 and love it. What am I waiting for? To me the deal stopper is on "selective sync" (and yes, I have both devices with limited storage and folders I don't want to sync at work). You get that sorted out and I'll give up on P2P capabilities, although that will be incredibly missed as well...
What can I say, living in Fiber-cabled Japan internet connexions are nearly as fast as LAN, and syncing stuff through Microsoft servers takes forever when compared with the straight P2P connections Mesh is able to build... Guess I'll have to either go back to carrying USB drives for my video-footage... or install yet another program.
@GoodThings2Life - I read the entire post, thank you. I listed a number of things that need to be moved from mesh to skydrive not just one thing you call 'this'. I realize that they are working on a few of these lacking features. However stating "you'd notice that they addressed this" after questioning if I had read the entire post, and not pointing out what exactly from my list of things what "this" is, is really just unnecessary. Also it's not really a great addition to a good conversation where people are praising, yet also giving some constructive criticism, in hopes that Microsoft listens to its users (and yes, I'm sure they are... but sometimes one wonders).
There are a number of things not addressed (as of now, nor by what is being said will be features in the future) and by no means should an update to one product that will "eventually" have features, uninstall the product that has the good features. This isn't acceptable.
I have patience, trust me. I've been using Mesh since it was a Connect only beta and watched the blunders, dropping of cool features and numerous name changes, and yes I have been patient. I still continue to use the product(s). If that's not patience, what is?
Thanks for your 2 cents though.
@Larswa I find strange what you say about not getting the 25GB offer. The 4GB figure was stated on some blogs, but from my experience wasn't accurate. Personally I had several Live accounts, some of them basically empty, and all of them got the 25GB opt-in. All my family did as well, and most had never reached anywhere close to 1GB... Are you sure you didn't open your Live account after the 7GB cut?
There was a 25 Gig opt in that needed to be performed upon the initial installation of the original skydrive for windows desktop apps, and there was a cut off date. If you didn't opt to keep your 25, you lost it and it went to 7. I have my primary account that got the 25, but I lost it on another account due to being too slow.
how about adding encryption? any plans to extend bitlocker to skydrive?
@jsj If you have bitlocker activated on a Windows PC it's already working on the skydrive files that are stored in your PC. Same way you can use any backup tool or W8 file history to get personal backups of your files. Anything that works on the windows file system works on your local copy of skydrive.
@danielgr wow....i didn't realize that. can you point to any documentation from MS that explains that? is the desktop client required?
Good one!
I do love the "Multi select drag and drop"
I do also want selective sync and I am happy to hear that It was under consideration
But please also add ability to change default theme color (Which is possible in outlook.com)
Please also add ability to COPY a shared folder with me to my skydrive so that even if the shared person can delete those folders after sharing
@jsj I don't know if there is any specific mention of it, but that's how it works.
Once you install skydrive desktop application on any PC your skydrive gets mirrored in your local hard disk and everything you have inside behaves like any other folder in your harddrive (except that it's real-time synced to the cloud). You can for example move your Win7/8 library folders (documents, desktop, etc.) inside skydrive if you want them cloud-ready.
Awesome news. Can't wait to see the new UI at my Laptop and download the official Android app ;)
There are many improvements, but it's a pity that, for photos, you still don't include descriptive tags in the information pane, and allow searching on descriptive tags.
The review of the new Windows client look great. Congratulations to the team.
Does the new Windows client still have the restriction whereby when running on Vista and Windows 7 your designated UAC policy prevents use by users running with elevated admin privileges? If so, the sad situation continues whereby users of a Windows Server based network, power users, and many laptop users will be prevented, by Microsoft design (on both sides of the equation), from being able to use SkyDrive.
All my colleagues have been forced to use Google Drive because of that SkyDrive design feature. It might even be too late for us to redesign our system and procedures to use SkyDrive even if it has now dropped that restriction - but it would be nice to have the choice.
Best wishes with SkyDrive, and I hope that if you haven't yet dropped the "no admin users" restriction, you are in the process of working towards that goal.
Alan
@Dare @Omar @Chris I now have the new SkyDrive and can confirm that ALL of the features a lot of us have been asking for are now in there! Yay! I very much look forward to the official Android app, which I hope will take advantage of the API's much needed new "downsize_photo_uploads=false" querystring parameter. These updates represent a fantastic upgrade to the service, and it's literally made my day. :P
It looks nice, but still some improvements are necessary.
1. Selective sync. I know you know, but just want to remind you it’s a really important feature :-)
2. Most of my folders in SkyDrive are just blue tiles. Maybe there should be some icons on them or you could create thumbnails from documents as well?
3. In previous version there was easy way to filter all documents/pictures folders and now it’s gone. Why?
4. We definitely need better photo experience. We should be able to filter them by tags, places, people, date etc. Something like in Windows Live Photo Gallery.
5. Are you guys planning to release Outlook app for Android? Current Hotmail app is just a poor excuse for an app.
One more thing. When I open a photo, I always have problem with coming back to a folder :-) There is this tiny link that says "Show folder", but I always look for big X or CLOSE in one of top corners. Something like at Pulse.me browser app.
Sorry for writing three posts in a row, but I just tried to share a photo on Facebook and I was quite surprised when I realised that I actually shared a link to a photo, while I wanted to publish it.
Skydrive works much better. Faster, better looking. Great!
BUT... How will you gonna replace Mesh? I'm used to sync my documents folder(s) between mi laptop and my desktop overseas. P2P, over internet. My peace of mind having an actual backup of my work if my laptop got lost or stolen.
Are you planning on something like this? Is there any product or feature I'm missing? Or will I have to start searching elsewhere? :(
@danielgr i get that the data mirrored from my skydrive is encrypted when it's on local disk. what i'd like is for the copy that is mirrored up to skydrive to be encrypted as well. from everything i can find, it is not. the only way to do this currently is to set up a third party product to encrypt the data in a seperate container and then mirror that container. It would be really nice if I could just use bitlocker to encrypt my skydrive from the bitlocker interface in windows as well insrtead of having to rely on a third party product.
I love the new SkyDrive design. Really good design work.
When does the Calendar update to Metro UI style?
It's nice, but the messenger isn't working well, I can send messages inside facebook but can't receive them back
and I'm not sure but maybe it would be nice if you add a back button in some sections because There isn't a way to return inside the page
:)
The skydrive.com link to the web page for SkyDrive seems to work well. I guess I'm old fashioned but I just use Windows Explorer to manage my uploads and SkyDrive account.
Using Firefox 14.0.1, I find the bottom frame of SkyDrive covers the bottom half of the tool bar, obscuring some of the selection choices. The frames probably should be size adjustable. I can't find out how to resize the frames.
At least one poster wondered about securely saving stuff to SkyDrive. I use BoxCryptor. It works by placing a virtual drive on your PC that can become a folder in SkyDrive. Adding files to the BoxCrypor drive encrypts the files and stores them on SkyDrive as well as your computer's hard drive. It's very fast. Again, I use Windows Explorer for management. Up to 2 gigs of data can be used free. Additional unlimited storage costs something like a one time fee of $30. Also, unlike Dropbox, the user has the key.
A side note on “choosing what to sync”
THAT IS AWESOME DO IT NAOW!!!!!
"A side note on “choosing what to sync”
We’ve heard feedback that some people would like to specify which folders in their SkyDrive sync to their PC. This can be due to space constraints on their laptop or tablet, or because they don’t want personal files syncing to their work PC. We’re working on a solution to this problem but can’t give specifics yet—stay tuned!"
Um ... yeah ... people still don't want to sync to the cloud. The option to sync PC-to-PC is still quite useful. For people I now with multiple devices, it's what's preferred. Having SkyDrive be the "anchor" host of many of those files and then risking the potential that they'd be lost from all those devices should a hacker get control is a great reason to re-introduce the core quality function that Live Mesh Beta/Windows Mesh brought to the table, with SkyDrive storage as an option for synchronizing multiple storage points, not a pre-requisite.
It would be very important to me having the possibility to restore changes in my files in case I make a mistake (alter or delete files). DropBox, for instance, have a free services where you can rollback any file (or change in a file) within the last 30 days. And you can also subscribe to a service to extend this period for ever!
This would definitely use SkyDrive as a simple (but reasonable) backup solution also.
When will there be a way for the app to update itself via the Apple App Store? Or at least a way to tell if the version hosted on the download website is newer than the version I have installed?
Desktop client for Windows XP please. Android and Apple platforms have it too.
Talk about taking design back to the dark age! Why can't we have an option to revert to the old look like Hotmail gives? I am closing all of my 20+ Hotmail accounts and moving to Google accounts if this atrocious design is forced on me.
I am a SkyDrive user and I like it very much and I also like the new update. Well done!
There are few features which are missing and I feel that they are very important. I hope they will be added in the near future.
1) "Choosing what to sync" as mentioned in this article is extremely important.
2) The ability to sync "shared folders".
3) Being able to sync to a Windows XP as well as to Linux.
4) The SkyDrive iPhone app doesn't allow users to save files into "shared folders"
5) All iPhone apps that I used that support SkyDrive don’t show the "shared folders". I assume that the SkyDrive API don’t give access to developers to show shared folders.
6) The ability to copy attachments or email content directly from hotmail (or the new outlook) to a folder in the SkyDrive
By "shared folders" here I mean folders which others gave me access too.
I hope these features will be included in the near future because they are very important.
Many thanks and well done again.
Totally agree with marrich... and by the way: really well done, i love it!
The only thing that is really still missing a complete makeover is the Calendar! Especially the way you can subscribe to other calenders is lacking some features or needs improvement (for example how often it gets new calendar items from the subscribed calendar, it seems completely random when it actually gets new items, and no way to set it...)
That's the only reason i still need my google account, to subscribe to calendars... ;)
keep it up and i'm confident the new calendar will be way better... :D
I would like to recommend the following featues:
1 - Ability to recover deleted files (preferably for 30 days) both for files deleted on skydrive.com and in your local SkyDrive Folder on a device, either by a recovery option or by moving files to a trash folder on skydrive.com first. I know that when you accidentally delete files on skydrive.com, the SkyDrive app deletes these files on your computer (if they exist) as well, but at least puts them in your local trash. In that case, you can recover a file. Files only on skydrive.com can’t be recovered. It would be much safer when you could recover files on skydrive.com as well.
2 - Sync files shared with me - Let SkyDrive app sync files that are shared with me
3 - Add desktop notifications to SkyDrive app, so especially when shared files are synced, the app alerts you that someone has updated or added files.
Since i have renamed my account to @outlook..com, i can't view/edit my personal info.
I upgraded to Outlook.com on Tuesday 31st and renamed my account to @outlook.com.
To view/edit my personal info, I did the following:
Clicked on Name in top right corner --> Account settings (https://account.live.com/) --> Account summary --> Edit personal info (account.live.com/EditProf.aspx)
Then instead of a form to edit the settings, I get this message:
x@outlook.com We're unable to retrieve information for this section at this time. We're sorry for the inconvenience, please try again later.
Do other users have the same problem?
Why no simple editing functions within the web app? You can't even rotate a photo! Come on it's incredible that a company the size of Microsoft and with it's heavy investment in 'cloud' apps can not produce functions like this out the gate!
I know if you rotate the photos in your Skydrive folder on a local machine they will sync those changes - but not every device of mine has my whole collection of photos in it.
Be nice if you could install the Skydrive app as a view only app (like a wedav connection) and then have the option to upload specific pics or folders when you neede to via drag and drop.
Where is the increase in purchaseable storage space? I know MANY people are anxiously waiting for this.
Or unlimited like Picasa for pictures?
I can't believe how ugly the new SkyDrive UI is! Is this what Windows 8 will bring? I think I'll stick a finger down my throat now and get it over with.
I've always loved the Metro UI and now, I'm glad to experience SkyDrive.com in the same way. It's like I'm working on the app itself, I know, SkyDrive app for Windows it superb in itself but I really like the new and improved design of SkyDrive.com
Also, I'm overjoyed that now I can use SkyDrive on my Android :-)
I know it's a bit out of topic but here's my question:
I have my Live ID and yet again, I need to create a new account for (just !!!) commenting on Windows Team Blog?
Can't you guys do with a single account for all of your products? [I really appreciate Google for such a practice.]
You know what? It really disappoints me and (I believe) many others too!
@all those asking for 30-days backups and similar.
- Sure It'd be nice to have such feature integrated in the skydrive cloud, but I guess though that right now Microsoft doesn't want to provide so much free storage. As AN ALTERNATIVE, you guys can back-up your locally synced folder on a PC with similar results, or enable file history in upcoming W8.
@all those asking for shared folder sync.
- Right now I don't think it's possible because while yous skydrive is limited to 25GB the ammount of shared data is virtually unlimited. Such feature would therefore require first to get "selective sync" done.
There are at least three glitches for Outlook.com:
1) In standard search there is no way to tell how many results were found
(reproducible in Hotmail i45.tinypic.com/6p82z7.png)
2) In advanced search:
- provide fuzzy search in To and From field for email like standard search has.
- provide date picker control for both Date between input fields.
- display count of results found in addition to pagination's total pages.
(reproducible in Hotmail i48.tinypic.com/2vxkhvp.png)
3) In IE9, while we are composing the email if we use Spell Check feature, the notification div is sticked to the bottom of the page and covers the last line of the text. Tapping/clicking the div should hide the notification. Same goes for other notifications.
More feedback to come...
Other than that, everything is A-OK with Outlook umbrella 8-)
Thank you so much for evolving these products!
This looks nice..a game changer. http://goo.gl/kvGN5
So sorry to see you drop Mesh. I don't want to hold everything in the cloud nor burn up my SkyDrive limits when I can go P2P. Please reconsider P2P and remote as 2012 is a great upgrade but many of us need P2P as well. It took so long for MS to get the functionality of Mesh right and now that you have it, why kill it. Please see how important this feature is to so many of us as evidenced by this thread and all of the others who will never comment here and instead will look for other products to fill the void. We're with you but please hear Your People.
People who have more than one skydrive account must be allowed to switch between accounts in the skydrive desktop apps. It seems like a childish app without this feature.
You've broken my Live Mesh setup!!!
1) I lost the Remote Connection ability.
2) I also lost the ability to sync arbitrary folders. Why on Earth do you want me to pile photos and documents in the SkyDrive folders?? Going back to stone age of piling everything in one folder? SkyDrive folder must be a LIBRARY, not folder.
Please fix this ASAP. I have work to do.
I like to list view more in comparison to Tiled view. I prefer to keep details pane open. After the UI change, it has gotten difficult to work with skydrive. There is no other way in which we can move, copy or see version history(or any other thing) of any document except by way of right clicking and then choosing. I think these options should also be made available in details pane.
By the way, why you people have stop providing updates for Hotmail and other ex-windows live services like groups, devices, people etc. on this blog. Now, it seems we have no other way to connect directly to you people.
Great! I love the concept but have one small problem. I have been using DropBox for a couple years now and as I am sure you know DropBox rewards users with additional free storage space for particular things. For example you get extra space every time someone signs up for DropBox based on your recommendation. I have set all of my clients up on DropBox and for that I now have close to 100Gb of FREE storage space out there. On top of that I have used Google Docs for slightly over a year since Microsoft didn't have a good solution for web-based sharing of docs. Since Microsoft is late to the game what are they going to do to help encourage people to migrate and help reduce what is now going to be fragmentation of my files?
Here is some feedback about the new sorting:
1) You should set order by date created desc for the photo folders *by default* (also retroactive to the existing ones)
2) Why you want me to SAVE a sort order?!?! in every modern UI, the sort order is automatically saved per folder, without the need of a save button.
3) The sort order is not persisted trough clients (e.g. Windows Phone Photo HUB or Windows 8 SkyDrive App), this is very annoying, please fix!
Thanks :)
The new SkyDrive.com doesn't work with Opera.
Why is it always thus?
I honestly like and use Skydrive as my primary Cloud storage, but comparing it to the competition i think it still lacks and has some major glaring issues with it. These are the short comings which prevents me from using the Skydrive sync app on my pc.
1. No Selective Sync
Without selective sync any cloud storage app is broken for me. I use my skydrive as an archive storage. Now if i install the sync tool it downloads everything from my skydrive to my pc which totally sucks imo. I have gb's of data on my skydrive and i dont want them on my disk all the time.
I only want to sync the files which i am working with or a folder or two . Dropbox beats Skydrive face first in this comparison.
2. File history and file recovery
Delete a file from skydrive and it's GONE! no way to recover the file. Not a big deal for me as I always think twice before deleting but it wouldnt hurt to have that feature.
3. Upload limit
Microsoft always has to do this, cripple something somewhere they have restricted the total upload size of file to 300 mb through web browser yet allow upto 2gb with the sync too. This is dumb imo. I have removed the tool because of the above reason and now I am creating split zip archives of 299 mb's to upload them.
if these things are ironed out Skydrive will be the best out there. With my 25 GB free storage there is nothing more i can ask for. i was fortunate enough to upgrade it to 25 gb when the 7 gb restriction was applied. But i guess microsoft will increase it once other competitors increase their's.
Till that time no skydrive sync tool for me. I will be using Dropbox as my tool of choice for syncing the files i am working on where as Skydrive will be only used as my Archive. I hate to use two tools to do the same thing but i guess i dont have much choice
Source: www.surfacehacking.com/showthread.php
@Omar Shahine: You answered @Tim Acheson that both issues are addressed but this isn't true or you are withholding the necessary information. @Dare Obasanjo told Tim that there is the new downsize_photo_uploads URL parameter but this doesn't work with RAW files unfortunately. RAW files are uploaded but stored with the embedded JPEG preview, the downsize_photo_uploads parameter doesn't work here. If there is another secret parameter for RAW files it would be great to tell it to the public. There are a lot of developers outside waiting desperately for a working API to support Skydrive.
I'm totally ready to move from Amazon S3 - which I always found highly confusing - to SkyDrive, but there are 2 things I'd absolutely need to see added:
1. The ability to back up contents from folders outside the Skydrive folder, or from another drive. I have 50 gB of photos on a second drive, and just moving them all to C: isn't an option.
2. Selective sync. Obviously I don't want those 50 gB of photos dropped on a laptop or tablet.
Looking over the previous comments, I see that I'm not the only one asking for these capabilities.
Skydrive and the Web apps are a great addition.
However, there are several bugs when creating Groups.
I confirmed this bug with two Groups that I created.
As the admin of a group, I cannot create nor edit a document. I find this very odd.
Another problem is there is no method to create a bug report.
How can i get this bug fixed?
Windows, SkyDrive.com, Outlook.com, #InsideSkyDrive, Enthusiast, Consumer
Omar Shahine,
I confirmed a bug with creating and editing documents in the Group account. Even as admin, I am prevented from creating documents.
Can you address this problem?
What happened to the Remote Desktop access to your PC?