Effective Tips to Manage Storage Space in Onedrive:

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Microsoft OneDrive is a great cloud storage solution for personal and business use. OneDrive offers unique features such as annotating PDFs from your smartphone, Selective sync, Delve, and more.

Microsoft-OneDrive-logo

But whenever OneDrive storage ticks the 5 GB mark, you 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 easily work using Microsoft OneDrive. Don’t worry; you need not buy a storage optimizer, as we have developed a manual optimizing routine for your free OneDrive storage.

Why is OneDrive File Management Important?

The number of files backed up and stored gradually increases as the usage of your personal computer is more frequent. This clutches your OneDrive storage with unwanted files overlapping your essential documents, photos, audio, and video files.

Note: With poor file handling, you may be unable to play one-drive videos.

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 deleting the files you no longer use. 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 and 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, it is the right time to organize the files and folders in your OneDrive for easy access. This automatically insists you remove any file that you no longer need.

How to Organize?

This is not a big deal, but initially, setting up the right folders for each file type takes time. 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 for one particular type of file all over your OneDrive storage. This will make file deletion easier.

3) Compress Files:

An easy way to reduce the usage of OneDrive storage space is by saving the compressed version of the files. Rarely used photos and documents can be compressed and saved in your storage. This increases the space to backup and saves your important files without fearing being short of storage. Tools like Zip or RAR are available to compress your files into a folder. With the new RAR5 compression the data compression capabilities have vastly improved.

4) Remove Duplicate Files:

Sometimes, you may upload the same file multiple times into your OneDrive storage. This results in unwanted storage space usage, and you will fall short of saving your important files. Photos and documents are the most common files saved from multiple devices to a single OneDrive account.

Removing 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 to remove duplicate files.

5) Choose What to Save:

By default, OneDrive has enabled the autosave option to save all the files you download to OneDrive. If you don’t want to save the images, videos, and screenshots 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 the Referral bonus program and earn 500 megabytes of storage for free. If you can invite 10 people to use OneDrive storage, you can earn an extra 5GB as a reward. This way, you can add another 5.5 GB to OneDrive storage.

7) OneDrive Photo Management:

Most of the users save large-size images to their Onedrive storage. This occupies most of the storage and leaves little space to save critical 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 you and your colleagues are working on. However, saving multiple versions of a file increases the file size, and it proportionally occupies more space in OneDrive storage. So, the best method to cut short the storage is to delete the older versions of the file that are no longer needed for you.

The above-mentioned tips are some OneDrive usage hacks 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 file accessibility and reduces the risk of losing any of your essential files in the clutter.

About the Author: Molly Owen

Molly is the Lead Technical Specialist with distinguished knowledge and understanding of Mac computers and operating systems. Being a veteran photographer and video recovery specialist, Molly’s expertise in video formats and file repair has helped restore a lot of videos and cherished memories of users. As a technical specialist, she also believes in learning and…