Microsoft is working on offline functions for OneDrive. Soon you’ll be able to work on files even when you don’t have an internet connection.

To edit OneDrive files offline, you now need to create an offline copy on your PC using the sync app. That’s about to change, as we see in the Microsoft 365 roadmap. Microsoft wants to make your files available offline too.

Always available

You can then make all sorts of changes to the document without an internet connection. The changes will automatically be synced to the file once you can go back online. You must first mark the document as “Always available offline” to always have access to it.

A preview of this functionality will be available in November. It will be available to all OneDrive users from December. Competitor Google already uses a similar method for files stored in Drive.

Microsoft is once again making a change to OneDrive that will be welcomed. Less popular were the decisions to quietly do away with the unlimited storage formula, and certainly the decision to count photos twice when placed in a folder. The change to now include email attachments in OneDrive storage is also causing headaches for users. We can expect a lot of new AI functionality in OneDrive soon, but more on that later.