Finding and Making a Copy of Shared Files

Description

You may wish to make a copy of files shared from former students' OneDrive accounts before they are deleted per our retention policy. 

Important: Documents saved in SharePoint/Teams (shared spaces) will not be deleted when students leave the University. This article only applies to files shared from OneDrive My Files. 

Environment

  • OneDrive

Solution

How Do I Know if I'm Accessing a Former Student's OneDrive Files?

The URL of the file will contain "/personal" and the OHIO ID of the former student.

 

Viewing Shared Files

You can also view your shared files in OneDrive to search for files shared by former students:

  1. Navigate to onedrive.ohio.edu. 

  2. If prompted, log in with your OHIO email and password. 

  3. In the left menu, select Shared. 

  4. Under the document title names, if you notice "[Last Name], [First Name's] Files," this indicates that the document is in someone's OneDrive and (for students) will be deleted when they leave the University.

    • Shared documents with an arrow pointing to the person's name to indicate the file is in OneDrive.

    • To search for a specific person's files, type their name in [Last Name, First Name] format into the Filter by name or person field.

Making a Copy of the File

If you want to keep the file, you'll need to make a copy. You can either make a copy of each file individually, or bulk download the files and re-upload them to your OneDrive or SharePoint. 

Making a Copy (for One File)

  1. Select the document title to open it.  

  2. Select File > Create a Copy > Create a Copy Online 

  3. Under File Name, give the document a new name.  

  4. Under Choose a Location, select the down arrow and then More Save Locations. 

    •  To save the file in OneDrive (your personal files) 

      1. In the left menu, select My Files. 

      2. Select your desired folder and then Save Here. 

    • To save the file in SharePoint (team files in a shared space) 

      1. In the left menu, under Quick Access, select your desired SharePoint site. 

      2. If you don’t see your desired SharePoint site under Quick Access, select More Places...and then select it. 

      3. Select your desired folder and then Save Here. 

Bulk Downloading

  1. From the Shared Files menu in OneDrive, you'll see a list of shared documents.

  2. Hover over the documents and click the circle button that appears. A check mark will appear beside the file. 

  3. Check all of the documents for which you want to make copies.

  4. Select Download at the top of the screen.

    • Don't see this option? You're likely trying to download something with unique permissions, which Microsoft does not allow due to security constraints. 

  5. Open your downloads folder on your computer (the downloads may be in a zip file).

  6. In a web browser, navigate to where you'd like to save your files (onedrive.ohio.edu "My Files" or a SharePoint Teams/document library.)

  7. Select Create or Upload > Files Upload.

  8. Select the files that you downloaded to your computer to upload them to OneDrive or SharePoint. 

    • Tip: Once these files are uploaded to OneDrive or SharePoint cloud storage, you can delete them from your hard drive. 

Outcome: You have made a copy of files shared from a former student's OneDrive, and you'll have access even when that student's OneDrive account is deleted. 

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