Select a language to translate this page!
Powered by Microsoft® Translator
We’ve focused on making SkyDrive the most versatile personal cloud storage service available—spanning file, app, and device clouds. So we appreciate it when reviewers recognize our progress, as with the recent PC Magazine award of Editor’s Choice in cloud storage to SkyDrive.
But our primary measure of success is whether key audiences, like students, use and love SkyDrive. That’s why we sponsored a student collaboration challenge (that received great submissions) and why we shared tips for students to make SkyDrive their cloud backpack. We’re happy to see students increasingly choose SkyDrive and share their stories.
Today, we’re excited to release a new recycle bin feature on SkyDrive.com and to tell you about a feature (Excel surveys) we’ll release in the coming weeks. Note: Due to how we release updates, the recycle bin feature may take up to 24 hours to appear in your SkyDrive. The Excel survey feature lets you easily create online surveys and analyze results using the free Excel Web App or Excel on your desktop. We hope these two new features will further enhance SkyDrive for students and others.
SkyDrive already keeps previous versions of your Office documents automatically. But students, in particular, have asked for a way to recover any file—even those deleted by accident, by someone else, during a group project. So, we’ve added a recycle bin to SkyDrive.
I’m going to start by showing you how we’ve made deleting files better. Prior to this release, when you deleted anything in SkyDrive you had to acknowledge and dismiss a warning dialog. This extra step got in the way of making delete as fast as it should be. Now, when you delete an item, we simply tell you that we did it and allow you to “undo” your action:
We think this will make deleting even faster and easier. However, if you have deleted something already, from any SkyDrive app, we’re now giving you a recycle bin that will work very similarly to what you’re used to on your PC. You can get to the recycle bin from a link in the bottom left side of SkyDrive.
From there you can browse your recycle bin in thumbnail or details view.
It’s easy to select items to restore back to their original location, as well as see when the item was deleted. And file and folder selection works just like it does in the rest of SkyDrive.
Items in the recycle bin do not count against your SkyDrive storage limit. We save all items you delete in the recycle bin for at least 3 days. If the content in your recycle bin gets large enough to exceed 10% of your storage limit (which will be pretty rare), we’ll start to delete the oldest content (after it’s been there 3 days), and will permanently remove items from the recycle bin after they have been there for 30 days (and not restored).
Right now, the recycle bin feature is available from SkyDrive.com, and over time we expect the recycle bin experience to make its way to other SkyDrive experiences too.
We’re also putting the final touches on adding Excel surveys to SkyDrive. Like the recycle bin, this has been a top request from students in particular, as they’re great for getting suggestions for a group project or party, collecting feedback or research results, running a competition, and much more. And unlike competing services, you can easily use the power of Excel Web App, Excel for Windows, or Excel for Mac to sort, analyze, or chart the results of your survey.
When these are released, all you will have to do is select “Excel survey” from the Create menu:
Then you’ll proceed through a set of steps to create the survey and each question has several options for different types of response that you want:
When you’re done, it takes just one click to share this survey with others and start collecting responses. We’re putting this through some final tweaks, and you should expect to see Excel surveys show up in your SkyDrive soon. We’ll let you know once it’s done.
We hope you like the recycle bin and upcoming Excel surveys. Let us know what you think.
-Omar Shahine, Group Program Manager, SkyDrive.com
Those features are great! Looking forward to trying out the Excel survey.
Any word on if LAN sync, PC to PC sync without the cloud, or remote PC access are coming? I used those daily with Mesh, and since Mesh has been killed off for SkyDrive, I have been struggling to find good alternatives
Omar:
Why isn't selective sync for the desktop app not a priority?
Google didn't make the mistake of launching Drive without it
You know people have to hold off on installing SkyDrive on certain PCs, hence just not investing in this the way you intend, until we can choose what folders get synced, right?
You say it's being worked on, but with no timeframe in sight, and no hint on what's so special about MS's implementation that makes it more complicated than what your competitors have already done
I want to use SkyDrive everywhere. Drop us a bone please. I'll even fill out an Excel survey if you want
Excellent additions. I'm particularly interested in possibly using the Excel Survey capabilities with a few of my freelance web projects to gain some simple feedback as users test out the site early on. Will it be possible to capture the url from which the survey was linked?
I would love it if I would import InfoPath forms and use a Skydrive-hosted Excel file as a backend! Or just redesign the survey in Infopath. That would be so great :-)
@csmikle we announced we are working on this feature. Sorry it's not ready yet!
@JohnCz what did you mean by this "Will it be possible to capture the url from which the survey was linked?"
Great to see improvements! SkyDrive is getting better and better with each iteration!
I look forward to checking out the Excel survey. The Google one always seemed limited so there is a great opportunity to build a better form!
Keep up the good work!
@omar
Don't let people try telling you what you should be working on or not unless they are involved with the project and otherwise is your direct supervisor ;). If it is on the list, then it's on the list and no sense begging for it every time a posting on SkyDrive comes along.
@Omar, for example: if we link to a survey from multiple website(s) pages...will it be possible to store in the survey "results" where (url) the user came from?
Any word on when Music and Video folders will be added?
I know it might be nitpicking, but why is the link to Recycle Bin located at the bottom instead of right beneath Shared? Wouldn't that be more logical, since the Recycle Bin is a folder (sort of)?
Apart from that, great work!
Why did you stop using the OneNote SkyDrive Changelog (skydrive.live.com) it was nice to be able to see what was improved with SkyDrive. As it says in the file:
"Our goal is to provide transparency into the changes we make to SkyDrive.com. When we update the site with changes, we'll add a new page with the details of what we did.
- The SkyDrive Team"
Also, please give us an ETA for selective sync, before Christmas, when Windows 8 launches, anything. It is so much better to wait when you know something. We appreciate that you are working on this feature, but any info would be great.
Thank you Omar. Is there a corresponding update to the Live Connect API (or perhaps just the documentation?) What would the path be (if any) to use to access the Recycle Bin via the REST interface? Is there a "friendly path" to the Recycle Bin object (like there are for documents, pictures, etc.?) Thanks.
How does the recycle bin feature interact with the various client apps you distribute? I.e. what exactly happens if I delete a file in explorer in the skydrive folder? The file obviously goes to the local recycle bin. Will it also go to the skydrive recycle bin? Equally, what happens locally on a synced machine when I delete a file on skydrive.com?
All that Skydrive needs now is Selective sync . Please add it
Excel Survey addition is very good indeed
I am just crossing my fingers and checking this blog every day until I see the "selective sync" feature has been added. I LOVED live Mesh for this reason. I almost pulled the trigger on DropBox last night so I can sync all my data to the proper devices. Especially with the cheap100GB upgrade. I just don't have room on my laptop SSD to download all my data, nor do I want to.
Please tell me selective sync will be here any day now!? All other features and options work fantastic, I am loving Skydrive, otherwise.
I have already converted many, many dropbox and sugarsync users to the Skydrive service ;-)
Thanks!
Wow...one feature I'v e been waiting for. Thanks a lot for this :)
I can't buy extra storage on SkyDrive, even though I want to, because you stupidly refuse to allow changes to the country of a Microsoft Account. In Europe, it is common to have a US address to get new features earlier. This has never been a problem, because I have never needed to use payment or region-specific content. But with new music and video stores, Windows Store and SkyDrive storage, I now do. And I can't - because you refuse to provide a perfectly simple option. At least you could let it be done through customer service. Do you really want me to use Google Drive instead? Google doesn't have any such reservations - and I don't really see a valid reason.
I was going to consolidate my various online accounts around the new Microsoft Account, but as long as this issue persists, I can't do it. And, no, creating a new account is NOT an option!
SkyDrive is finally getting features it should have had from day one, sadly it wont be replacing dropbox for me until it gets selective sync. I am loving the improvements though.
Recycle bin is nice. Here's hoping the ability for shared folders to sync with other people is coming soon.
Those new features are really good but I'd like to know if you are updating the Skydrive Windows 8 App adding this features, that would be cool+
Excel survey...you have made my day! This really levels the playing field. Can't wait to introduce this to my teachers!
It's great! - Items in the recycle bin do not count against SkyDrive storage limit.
Love the new features, now it would be great to have a percentage of how full our bin is. That way we can 'rummage' through the trash before items start getting deleted.
@avidgator : The Live Connect API does not have support for the Recycle bin. However, I would love to hear your scenario. You can reach me via blogs.msdn.com/.../contact.aspx or twitter @deepeshm
Great features! Love the recycle bin!!! ;-)
Btw: Is an option like saving attachments from outlook.com directly to Skydrive in planning? that's one feature I would very much appreciate!! i can do it easily when i'm on my home pc with the desktop app installed, but for example at work it would make things a lot easier!! ;)
keep up the god work!
@Skydrive Team: Thanks Skydrive... for becoming the best collaboration service till date. I love these new features.
However, I would like to make a point:
why not keep the files in Recycle Bin as long as the user deletes it, just like a PC. Because sometimes we delete files and forget and when we need them again it becomes too late to recover.
I know to keep that large amount of deleted data on cloud server would mean increase in your costs. But you can save those if you include it in the storage limit of user (which I think is better option).
Skydrive and Omar...
I like what you are doing, and dont get me wrong.. your work is great.. BUT
i agree with the 3rd post from 'csmikle'
WE WANT SELECTIVE SYNC.. and that should be a bbigger priorirty than things like Excel surveys..
so more resources should be spent on that..
everyone keeps saying this, yet we have been waiting months for this feature to the point where you are probably losing members because of it.
Plus i don't understand how it can take soo long to programme selective sync. Competitors have done it.. so I dont see the difficulty.
As i say, im with 'csmikle' on this one..
no one is interested in anything other feature as much as SELECTIVE sync. So please make that priority no.1!! and give us a time frame at least!!
Any word on incorporating "hidden" attribute when files are synchronized?
Also please incorporate the six sharing features mention in this suggestion -> answers.microsoft.com/.../9c22caca-75b1-4c01-bb00-9cb6947b7315 ?
+1 million for selective sync
Another thing I like about dropbox/gdrive and a lot of the other cloud storage solutions, is that they offer "Previous versions" on _any_ file. So if I accidentally edit a photo or any other file, I can revert to the previous version by logging into the web interface. Would be great to add this to the list of features!
@JohnCz not that I am aware of. The survey does not collect the URL of the referring site.
@osixeleven we spent a long time deciding where the link would go. In the end we felt that the frequency of which people will access the recycle bin didn't warrant it being so prominent in the product.
@hohansen In the end, we blog about so many of the changes that it got to be a lot of overhead to keep the change log updated. The delta between the detail in the OneNote and our blog posts was fairly small.
@avidgator at this time, the Recycle bin is not part of the developer API for SkyDrive.
@davidacoder when you delete a SkyDrive file on your PC it goes to the cloud recycle bin. Similarly when you delete something in the cloud it goes to your PC Recycle bin.
@arknu can you please fill out a support form on support.live.com/eform.aspx so we can get this sorted out?
Like others said above: we need selective sync. And we need to extend the sync to arbitrary folders and drives.
Skydrive is offering large amounts of storage; but how many users with 100 GB of stuff to back up will be willing to move it all to a single SkyDrive folder on C:?
I can't even consider SkyDrive without these basic capabilities.
The new recycle bin feature is unusable if a large number of files were deleted. My wife accidentally deleted all of her files, while cleaning up a computer. ( she meant to delete the files from that computer, thought she had disabled Skydrive, but she didn't uninstall it completely) .
While I can see about 4,000 deleted files in the Skydrive web recycle bin, and even select all of them at once, Skydrive can't restore them all at once. That means she would have to click file by file and restore small chunks at a time.
Is there a workaround for this? Even the ability to easily select multiple files (like clicking and dragging in Windows Explorer) would make this task somewhat manageable.
Love the recycle bin. Already paying many GB of storage... But selective sync + shared folders sync is a great feat I'm really missing. Couldn't care less for Excel surveys.
SkyDrive was and still is a great service! But, it lacks various important features that are available in Live Mesh (which I was using until recently for more than 2 years) and moreover in the competitors' similar products.
"Must have" features for making the SkyDrive leading cloud storage and file sharing service:
1. Selective Sync (as in Dropbox and Google Drive) for Windows/Mac/Mobile apps including the ability to sync the folders that are shared with me by someone else (Google Drive makes this possible by dragging the shared folder to the "My Drive" folder)
2. In addition to the previous: Not counting the size of the folders shared with me in my own storage size (Dropbox counts it but Google Drive does not, SkyDrive also shouldn't)
3. Advanced permission management
4. Ability to buy storage more than 100 GB.
Go on guys, you are the best!
Best regards.
1 QUESTION:
CAN YOU GIVE US A TIME FRAME FOR WHEN SELECTIVE SYNC WILL BE AVAILABLE PLEASE?
SkyDrive is a Great Option!
Here is an interesting blog post on <a href="studyworldglobal.com/.../">Online Backup</a> options covering Sky Drive at <a href="studyworldglobal.com/.../a>
@kplanas Hi , very simple. on top right next to sort by name select the " details view" . Now check the top left box next to " Name " which will select all files, hit restore. Hope this helps...Take care
Still waiting for the Survey in the US. Have to use Google Docs until then...
How about instead of adding new features, you actually try and get the basics done first. All over the support forums for almost a year people are complaining about files getting stuck syncing and it holding up all other file syncs. This is a huge bug that needs to be fixed urgently but instead you are adding new features. Not to mention that the upload speeds are glacial at best.
Anyone who reads this and is thinking of using SkyDrive, don't, you are paying to alpha test their product. If you ask for a refund of the full years subscription they make you pay, this is the response you will get:
"Upon checking on your subscription, you were not eligible for the refund anymore as we only have 14 days timeframe for it and you have exceeded 1 day. What I can suggest is for you to keep your subscription until it expires since you already have paid for it. "