Microsoft kills OneDrive Groups, wants you to use shared folders instead

Martin Brinkmann
May 23, 2014
Microsoft
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Groups has been a feature of Microsoft's Windows Live service before it was integrated into OneDrive. Each group received 1 Gigabyte of storage that did not affect user storage quotas and was shared between all group members.

All group members were allowed to read, create, modify and delete contents -- meaning files and folders -- with a group's folder. Groups provided members with additional features, for instance group discussions, a calendar, options to mass email group members using outlook.com, or options to to upload and share photos easily.

The OneDrive integration of Windows Live's Group feature did not change that initially, but if you check out the groups page right now, you will notice that it is no longer possible to create new groups on OneDrive.

The page states that you cannot create new groups or invite people to existing groups in OneDrive. Groups that have been created previous to that are still accessible by all group members though.

According to Microsoft support members, it should still be possible to invite other users to groups even though the Groups page itself states otherwise.

The support members recommend that users use the sharing functionality that OneDrive offers instead. While that enables you to share files with others, it does not offer the same functionality and approach as groups yet.

While you can share folders with users so that they can edit files inside, you do not get the same manageability that groups provided.

While users that you have shared a folder or file with are displayed on OneDrive as well, the current feature lacks discussions, calendars and other management features at the time of writing.

This means that you will need to use another service to make use of those if you want to replicate the groups functionality using the Shared feature on OneDrive.

There is for instance no option to quickly mail all group members. Another difference is that you share using your own storage quota and not the group's fixed quota that is independent from a user's quota.

Microsoft has not released a statement yet why it removed the creation of new groups from OneDrive. If you are looking for an alternative, try out Yahoo Groups which offers a similar but not identical feature set.

Have you used Windows Live Groups or OneDrive's Groups feature? If so, what is your take on the change?

Summary
Microsoft kills OneDrive Groups, wants you to use shared folders instead
Article Name
Microsoft kills OneDrive Groups, wants you to use shared folders instead
Description
Microsoft has removed options to create new groups on OneDrive in a recent service update.
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Comments

  1. Some Dude said on March 19, 2023 at 11:42 am
    Reply

    Are these articles AI generated?

    Now the duplicates are more obvious.

    1. boris said on March 19, 2023 at 11:48 pm
      Reply

      This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.

  2. Paul(us) said on March 20, 2023 at 1:32 am
    Reply

    Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
    1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
    2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro

    Why oh why?

    1. Clairvaux said on September 6, 2023 at 11:30 am
      Reply

      Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?

  3. John G. said on August 18, 2023 at 4:36 pm
    Reply

    Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.

    Special event by they is a special crap for us.

  4. yanta said on August 18, 2023 at 11:59 pm
    Reply

    If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
    Better brands at better prices elsewhere.

  5. John G. said on August 20, 2023 at 4:22 am
    Reply

    All new articles have zero count comments. :S

  6. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
    It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage

    I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one

  7. St Albans Digital Printing Inc said on September 5, 2023 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.

  8. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 12:47 pm
    Reply

    What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?

    1. GG said on September 6, 2023 at 8:24 am
      Reply

      Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.

      I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.

      And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?

      Nope, just charge the customer twice.

      Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.

  9. d3x said on September 5, 2023 at 7:33 pm
    Reply

    When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?

  10. Scroogled said on September 5, 2023 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.

  11. ard said on September 7, 2023 at 4:59 pm
    Reply

    For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
    quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
    unquote

    so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.

  12. Andy Prough said on September 7, 2023 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    >”Now You: what is your theory?”

    That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.

    Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.

  13. TelV said on September 8, 2023 at 12:04 pm
    Reply

    Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.

  14. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.

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