Microsoft OneDrive is a great cloud storage solution for both personal and business use. OneDrive offers some unique features such as Annotate PDFs from your smartphone, Selective sync, Delve and more.
But whenever OneDrive storage ticks the 5 GB mark, you start to worry about clearing the storage space to back up and save the new files from your personal computer or mobile.
To overcome this, planning a basic routine to clean the cloud storage helps you to work with ease using Microsoft OneDrive. Don’t worry, you need not buy a storage optimizer as we have come up with a manual optimizing routine to take care of your free OneDrive storage.
Why OneDrive file management is important?
The number of files backed up and stored gradually increases as the usage of your personal computer is more frequent. This makes your OneDrive storage cluttered with unwanted files overlapping your important documents, photos, audio and video files.
If you are not monitoring OneDrive storage regularly, there are chances of creating duplicate files due to multiple uploads of the same file or automatic back up and sync. To avoid such circumstances, you are advised to manage your storage space and use the available OneDrive features effectively.
Easy tips to manage your OneDrive storage space:
1) Delete unused files:
The first step towards managing your OneDrive is to delete the files that are no longer used by you. To do this Go to OneDrive.com -> Click Files -> Sort files according to size (Decreasing order). This shows files occupying the major portion of your OneDrive space. Select and delete the unused oversized files and other junk files from your storage. Most of the space will be occupied by Video or movie files uploaded accidentally. So cleaning these files results in an ample amount of storage space.
2) Categorize your files:
Once you have cleared up space for new files to get backed up and synced to your OneDrive space. Now it is the right time to organize the files and folders in your OneDrive for easy access. This automatically insists you to remove any file that is no longer needed to you.
How to organize?
This is not big deal but initially, it takes time to set up the right folders for each file type. For example: Create a default folder for each file type. Whenever a new file is created in that particular file type that file is automatically saved in a default folder. This reduces your time to search one particular type of file all over your OneDrive storage. This will make file deletion easier.
3) Compress files:
Easy way to reduce the usage of OneDrive storage space is by saving the compressed version of the files. Rarely used photos, documents can be compressed and saved in your storage. This increases the space to backup and saves your important files without having the fear of short of storage. Tools like Zip, RAR is available to compress your files into a folder.
4) Remove duplicate files:
Sometimes you may end up uploading the same file multiple times into your OneDrive storage. This ends up in unwanted storage space usage and you will fall short to save your important files. Photos and documents are the most common file types that saved from multiple devices to a single OneDrive account.
To remove the duplicate file manually is a difficult process, but to make this routine easier you can use a duplicate file remover tool to find and delete duplicates from your OneDrive storage. Sync your OneDrive account to this cloud-based software and follow the steps provided in the guide through to remove duplicate files.
5) Choose what to save:
By default, OneDrive has enabled autosave option to save all the files you download to OneDrive. If you don’t want to save the images, videos and screenshots to get saved in your OneDrive storage, follow these steps Go to settings -> Auto Save - > Change Document and Picture settings to This PC only -> Uncheck Photos and videos and Screenshots.
6) Expand OneDrive storage for free:
If you are not ready to pay to buy extra OneDrive storage, there is an easy way to expand storage. Join Referral bonus program and earn 500 megabytes of storage for free. If you are able to invite 10 people to used OneDrive storage, you can earn extra 5GB as a reward. By this way, you can add up another 5.5 GB to OneDrive storage.
7) OneDrive photo management:
Most of the users save large size images to their one drive storage. This occupies the major portion of the storage and gives very little space to save your important work-related documents. An alternate way to save your images is by reducing the picture quality of the image which automatically reduces the size of the image and occupies less OneDrive space.
8) Manage versions:
OneDrive allows you to save multiple versions of a file that you and your colleagues are working on. But saving multiple versions of file increases the file size and it proportionally occupies more space of OneDrive storage. So the best method to cut short the storage is to delete the older versions of the file that is no longer needed for you.
Above mentioned tips are some OneDrive usage hacks that you can follow to clean up the OneDrive storage space. By setting up this storage management routine your OneDrive will never fall short of storage space. This increases the file accessibility and reduces the risk of losing any of your important files in the clutter.
