Office 365 (OneDrive) - OneDrive for Business Service versus OneDrive Service
This article discusses the difference between the OneDrive and OneDrive for Business services.
OneDrive is a cloud storage, file hosting service for personal use that allows users to sync files and later access them from a web browser, mobile device, or computer. Users can share files publicly or with their contacts. A Microsoft account is not required to access the publicly shared files from a OneDrive account. OneDrive offers users up to 5GB of storage for free.
OneDrive for Business is the version of OneDrive for organizations with many users. UWM offers OneDrive for Business to all their students, faculty, and staff. The main difference between the OneDrive for Business service and the personal use OneDrive service is that OneDrive for Business utilizes the program SharePoint, which allow users to seamlessly share files with one another. OneDrive for Business offers every user of an organization up to 1TB of storage.
OneDrive for Business is the version of OneDrive for organizations with many users. UWM offers OneDrive for Business to all their students, faculty, and staff. The main difference between the OneDrive for Business service and the personal use OneDrive service is that OneDrive for Business utilizes the program SharePoint, which allow users to seamlessly share files with one another. OneDrive for Business offers every user of an organization up to 1TB of storage.
Both the OneDrive service and the OneDrive for Business service include the following features:
- Recycle bin: When users delete any files, the service will allow the user to undo the action and restore the deleted file from the recycle bin back to the original folder. Items in the recycle bin do not count against the user's OneDrive storage limit. All items stored in the recycle bin are kept for a minimum of 3 days and a maximum of 90 days. If the content in a user's recycle bin exceeds 10% of the user's storage limit, OneDrive will delete the oldest content from the recycle bin (provided that the files have been in the recycle bin for at least 3 days).
- Download as ZIP files: Entire folders can be downloaded as a single ZIP file with OneDrive. For a single download, there is a limit of 4 GB or 65,000 files (whichever comes first).
- Office Online: Microsoft added Office Online (known at the time as Office Web Apps) capability to OneDrive in its "Wave 4" update, allowing users to upload, create, edit and share Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents directly within a web browser. In addition, Office Online allows multiple users to simultaneously co-author Excel documents in a web browser, and co-author OneNote documents with another web user or the desktop application. Users can also view the version history of Office documents stored on OneDrive.
- Formats: OneDrive allows the viewing of PDF documents, as well as documents in the Open Document Format (ODF), an XML-based file format supported by a number of word processing applications, including Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org and Corel's WordPerfect. OneDrive's search function does not allow search within PDF documents.
- Client applications: Microsoft has released OneDrive client applications for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone that allow users to browse, view and organize files stored on their OneDrive cloud storage. In addition, Microsoft also released desktop applications for Microsoft Windows (Vista and later) and OS X (Lion and later) that allow users to synchronize their entire OneDrive storage with their computers for offline access, as well as between multiple computers. The Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 versions also allow camera photos to automatically be uploaded to OneDrive. In addition to the client apps, OneDrive is integrated into Windows 8.1 and later, Microsoft Office 2010 and later, as well as the Office and Photos hub in Windows Phone, enabling users to access documents, photos and videos stored on their OneDrive account and access files directly from OneDrive as if they are stored locally.
- Integration with Microsoft Office: Users of recent versions of Microsoft Office (for Microsoft Windows or OS X) can use the desktop applications to simultaneously edit the same section of documents stored on OneDrive. Changes are synchronized when users save the document, and where conflicts occur, the saving user can choose which version to keep. This allows for collaborative real-time editing with multiple users. Users can also use several different desktop and web programs to edit the same document.