Here are the top 10 features people want in OneDrive

In the past couple of weeks, we have had a look at the top 10 features that people want in Microsoft Teams and Outlook, respectively. The list was curated based on the items that the public has requested on Microsoft"s feedback portal for Microsoft 365 services. Today, we"ll be talking about the top 10 features people want in OneDrive.

As usual, we will only be listing issues that are "open", sorted by upvote count. As such, capabilities which Microsoft has rolled out in general availability or preview will be excluded. Also note that this list may cover multiple platforms and does not only include Windows. With that said, let"s begin!

  1. Reassess the possibility to ignore or exclude selected OneDrive folders and files from the sync process - 8,468 upvotes
    Microsoft: This feature has rolled out for files and we are looking to expanding it to folders in the future.
  2. Enable syncing over LAN - 7,857 upvotes
    Microsoft: We don’t have a timeline yet but it’s still on our radar.
  3. Allow shared folders to be stored within sub folders - 5,329 upvotes
    Microsoft: We’re looking at two related pieces of this:
    1) For OneDrive for Business, enable shared folders to be added to the root of the OneDrive folder at all (like in OneDrive Personal).
    2) For OneDrive across business and personal, enable shared folders to be placed into subfolders.
    We appreciate your patience; this is significant engineering work given the architecture of the products and our diverse customer base, spanning individuals to small businesses to multi-national enterprises to government agencies. We aim to address this while maintaining our industry-leading security, privacy, and compliance commitments. Thank you for the continued feedback.
  4. Implement a folder tree like Google Drive. It would make navigating and moving files around much easier - 5,236 upvotes
    Microsoft: Thanks for all the feedback on this item. It"s one the team hears and we are continuing to track this as part of our future roadmap. Please continue to share your thoughts and ideas here!
  5. Enable Linux support - 4,799 upvotes
    No response from Microsoft.
  6. Add the ability to people tag - 4,711 upvotes
    Microsoft: Wanted to provide an update here: this is something we’re planning on doing, but don’t have a timeframe to share yet.
  7. Allow OneDrive for Business folder to be renamed - 4,536 upvotes
    Microsoft: Thanks for the suggestion.
  8. Ability to access the Personal Vault via MacOS just like Win10 - 4,154 upvotes
    No response from Microsoft.
  9. Ability to Zip and Unzip a File - 3,560 upvotes
    Microsoft: Thank you for this suggestion. We don’t have specifics to share, but wanted to provide an update that we are looking into this for future updates.
  10. Prevent shared files from being downloaded - 3,459 upvotes
    Microsoft: We’ve rolled out an update which includes support for PDF files, images, audio and other file formats. This update doesn’t yet include support for video files but we’re working on it and will have more to share soon!

This time around, it"s encouraging to see that even if Microsoft hasn"t been able to commit to firm timelines for most requests, it has at least responded to most items in the top 10 list. Last week, it was quite disappointing to see that even though people have tons of requests for Microsoft Teams, the company is quite unresponsive in that specific portal.

Overall, it"s a pretty interesting list and I can see how many of them could benefit users, especially organizational customers. Some features are in active development while others are on Microsoft"s radar without a concrete release date. It will be interesting to see how the company caters to these requests and their respective rollouts in the near future.


Do you use OneDrive? Which features would you want Microsoft to implement? Let us know in the comments section below and also inform Microsoft by submitting your feedback over here!

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