File storage and sharing

All students have access to OneDrive and SharePoint for storing and sharing files. You can access them on any device, wherever you are.

OneDrive

Recommended for storing files and documents

OneDrive is free for all students at Manchester Met. OneDrive provides a large file storage area that you can access from any device via web browser or a downloadable app. 

How to access OneDrive

Web browser: log into OneDrive

  1. Go to office365.mmu.ac.uk and log in with your username in the format:

  2. Click the OneDrive tile 
Personal devices: download the OneDrive app

How to use OneDrive

Uploading, sharing, and managing your files
Add OneDrive to other Office apps

You can access your OneDrive area from within other Office applications for saving and opening files; you’ll just need to add it as a location first. We’ve created guides to help: 

Please note: you’ll need to do this each time you log onto a student PC on campus. This is because the PC is wiped each time you log off to protect your data.

  • What are the benefits of using OneDrive?
    • Access anywhere: enjoy the freedom to access, edit and share your files on all your devices, wherever you are. This means no more large email attachments, as you can just send a link via email or MS Teams  
    • Share and collaborate: OneDrive helps you to stay connected and share your documents easily and efficiently with others, as well as collaborate in real time with Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc)  
    • 10GB of space 
    • Back up and protect: your files are secure when they’re saved in OneDrive and are entirely protected if your device breaks. OneDrive manages version history so you can restore a previous version yourself if you need to.  

SharePoint

Recommended for collaborating on projects

SharePoint consists of websites called ‘team sites’, that use ‘Lists’ and ‘Libraries’ to store, manage and share information. These can be accessed and shared on any device via the Cloud.

There are already many team sites being used across the University.

Students can set up a SharePoint site by creating an Office 365 Group. 

OneDrive and SharePoint: what's the difference?

OneDrive is a place where you can store files from your computer into the Cloud, access them from any device, or share them with others. 

OneDrive lets you update and share your files from anywhere and work on Office documents with others at the same time.
 

When to use OneDrive
  • You don’t plan to share them. Documents in OneDrive are private until you share them. This makes OneDrive your best option for draft documents or personal documents that no one else needs to see 
  • You plan to share files individually 
  • You can’t identify an existing team site where your document belongs, and you don’t think the purpose of the document warrants creating a new one 

A SharePoint team site is a place that users can collaborate on files, documents, and ideas. It is set up to facilitate two-way communication. 

SharePoint offers a full range of document libraries, task lists, calendars, workflows, wikis, and other features to help communicate and collaborate. 
 

When to use SharePoint
  • You want your lecturers or other students to contribute to this and other files as part of a project. You can do this by creating an Office 365 Group, which creates a SharePoint and other resources, such as a Shared Mailbox and Calendar. 
  • Some academic units will have a Teams group set up for students and tutors to communicate, or for online teaching. These groups will have a linked SharePoint that can be used to share documents with others on that unit (often accessed directly from within MS Teams). 

Save your work

We shut down unattended computers to save energy, so saving your work regularly is important.

When using the University’s computers, always save files to your OneDrive. We recommend you save documents to your OneDrive as soon as you have created them.

Never save files to your desktop. Whenever your session on a University computer times out, the device is shut down and any files saved to the desktop are deleted.

For details on shutdown policies, including how long a computer can be inactive before shutting down, visit computer shutdown and power-saving policies.