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As home broadband speeds increase it’s becoming easier and easier to use the Internet to share your photos, music, videos and documents with friends and family.  In years gone by it had been necessary to copy these files to a CD or USB drive in order to share them, but these days it can often be quicker and easier to send them directly to the recipient.  The only problem with this is that most Email services will only accept file attachments that are relatively small, say 5 or 10MB.  However it is entirely possible to share your files and folders, up to 50MB each, over the Internet for free using Skydrive from Microsoft.

What is Skydrive?

Skydrive is a part of the Windows Live family of applications (like Windows Live Messenger or Hotmail).  To access it you just need a Windows Live login, which a lot of people will already have if they already use any of Microsoft’s other Windows Live products such as Hotmail, Live Messenger or Xbox Live.

With Skydrive you can get 25GB of free online storage (there’s a 50MB size limit per file) which you can use to store your own personal documents or to share files, music and photos with anyone, with password protection in place to prevent your files being looked at by others.  You can even separate your Skydrive into different folders and allow different people access to each folder, so you can keep work files and personal files separate and protected, for instance.

How Does Skydrive Work?

There are currently two main ways to use Skydrive, you can either use your web browser to upload and share files, or there is also integration within Microsoft Office 2010 to allow you to save documents directly to your Skydrive (as apposed to locally on your computer).  In both situations the files you select are saved to a server operated by Microsoft for you to view wherever you have an Internet connection available.  You can also create Microsoft Office documents from within Skydrive in your web browser and then share these with friends and family.

Before you can use Skydrive you’ll need to sign up for the service, head over to http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive and click where it says “Get Skydrive”.  You’ll then be taken to a Windows Live signup page as shown below.

If you’re already a Windows Live user then you can enter your Live ID here and have instant access to your Skydrive, but if your not then you’ll need to click on the “Sign Up” button on the left hand side of the screen and create a Windows Live ID for yourself.  Don’t worry if this is the case, Windows Live is entirely free and carries many additional benefits including the potential for free Email and Instant Messaging.

Once you’re signed up you should be taken to the web page for your Skydrive, which will look like the image below.

From here you’ll be able to set up your online folders, decide who can see them and eventually upload files to Skydrive.

Setting Up Your Skydrive Folders

The first thing you’ll want to do on Skydrive is set up some sort of folder structure into which you can save your files, you may want to arrange files according to who can view them (for example, folders named “work files” and “personal stuff”) or by who you wish you view the files (for example, folders named “friends” and “colleagues”).  It’s entirely up to you how you set up your folders, but bare in mind that it’s easier to control who can view which documents by controlling the folders rather than the individual files.

Once you’ve decided how you wish to organise your files, you can create folders by clicking on the “New” button within Skydrive and then clicking “Folder”, as below.

You will then be able to name your folder, change who can view it (there are options for “everyone”, “my friends and their friends”, “friends”, “some friends” and private) , and save it so that it appears in your folder list.  The “Movies” folder in the second picture in this article is an example of a folder you could create for yourself.  You can repeat this for any folders you’d like, in the example below I’ve set up various folders based upon the types of files I might want to upload to my Skydrive.

Once your folder structure is set up, and you’ve set up who can see each folder, you’re ready to upload your files to skydrive.  To do this, click on the “Add Files” button near the top of the page, you’ll then be asked which folder you wish to upload to:

Select a folder and a new page will automatically load, from here you can click on “Select documents from your computer” which will bring up a window where you can select which files you wish to upload from your computers hard drive to your Skydrive:

Once you’ve selected your files, they’ll be uploaded to your Skydrive, and shown in the file window, you can then click on the “select more documents…” text at the bottom to add more, or select “Continue” to complete the upload:

Continue this process for each file you wish to upload to Skydrive, and before you know it you’ll have shared all of your important files with your friends and family.  You can even select whether those people can simply view your documents and photos, or whether they can edit them as well.  If you have elected to share any of your files and folders on Skydrive then you’ll be prompted to send an Email notification to those people which will explain to them how they can view the files on your Skydrive.

Saving to Skydrive From Microsoft Office 2010.

If your computer has Microsoft Office 2010 installed then you can save your files directly to Skydrive rather than having to transfer them manually using your web browser.  The advantage of this is that it’s quicker, and also you’ll be protected from having multiple copies of the same document (one on Skydrive, one on your computer) which will help prevent confusion if it’s a file you intend to use a lot.

To save a document directly to Skydrive, click on the “File” menu in any of the Office 2010 programs and then click on “Save&Send”, then “Save to Web”, you’ll then be prompted to login using your Windows Live account (this will only happen the first time you use this feature):

You’ll then be prompted to login to your Windows live account, as below:

Enter your Windows Live details and you’ll then see a list of the folders on your Skydrive, and from here you can select a folder (remembering, of course, who has permissions to each of the folders) and then click “Save As” to save your Office 2010 document to Skydrive:

Now, depending on the size of the document (and the speed of your internet connection) it may seem like Office “hangs” at this point.  Bare with it and within 10-20 seconds you should see the following:

This window is very similar to the ordinary “Save as” window for saving documents on your computer, but notice in the address bar that the location is the folder on your Skydrive, not any directory on your computer.  At this point all you need to do is check the file name (and change it if necessary) and then click “Save” to upload the file to Skydrive.  Office will then upload the document to Skydrive automatically and you can browse to it through your web browser.

Important Things to Consider

No matter whether you’re using Skydrive or another online data storage system, it’s important to consider a few things when choosing to work in this way:

1. When saving files to Skydrive you are choosing to save your files to a server that you don’t own, and Microsoft (nor any other provider) will accept any responsibility if your files are accidentally deleted or somehow lost.
2. Setting correct permissions is absolutely essential, the last thing you want is for every Tom, Dick and Harry to have access to your important files and folders.
3. Skydrive is free, for now.  Microsoft are under no obligation to continue to provide this service, though hopefully if they decide to withdraw the service they would at least give you notice to allow you to save all of your important files.
4. Skydrive is not a suitable way to backup your documents, for the reasons explained in point’s one and three above.