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How can we improve the OneDrive experience on Windows?

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Allow priority settings for files being uploaded

I'm currently uploading a high amount of data (I selected all the files I wanted and copied them to onedrive folder) and it's taking a lot of time. The problem is that some files are more important to me than others and I need them to be uploaded first. It would be great if I could make certain files/ folders that are being uploaded a priority so that those files with higher priority will be the first uploaded (for example, bittorent has this option when downloading files). It would take me a lot of time to cancel the upload and just copy/paste each file in the order I want them to be uploaded.

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Paul Ciucur shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

112 comments

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  • Björn Johansson commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I, too, want this feature. Sometimes I upload many big files and I know when I need to use them I wont have one file done.

    But enough data has been transferred to have one of the files. I am new to onedrive but had this issue elsewhere and hope it can come here.

  • Bruce Wainwright commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I seem to have found a simple workaround and/or solution.

    I have a large amount of folders and files I have shared with a few coworkers that we work from collaboratively on a daily basis. My OneDrive has been having a hard time syncing all the files recently. It seems like this is because the number of new files and changes is very high (over 1500 changes). It appears it is stuck in a loop of trying to process all the changes and sync all the files.

    For files I need prioritized, however, if I view my OneDrive online and drag the local files I've made that show the "sync pending" symbol to the online folder, they quickly upload online and sync.

    So far that seems to work for files I need coworkers to access immediately.

  • Milan Scheenloop commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Maybe it's time to stop thinking about it and just doing it.
    There are companies where files need to be uploaded to OneDrive/Sharepoint on the fly and also retrieved from OneDrive/Sharepoint on the fly.
    Is there still a point in Uservoice when nothing ever happens to these suggestions? This suggestion is a critical one. And it's being 'thought about' since 2015. It's a no-brainer.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is also linked to the slow upload. Automatic uses 348KB/s which is approximately 1% of my bandwidth. Setting to unlimited raises it to 20Mbps which is still a tiny fraction of what it could be.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Feedback from December 2014, responded and thinking since March 2016... still nothing in June 2020 >:(

  • Brian Griffiths commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is critical to the way most people operate in a business environment these days. There is no need to 'Think about it'; it needs to be done... and quickly.

  • Eva commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is an important feature for sure. I'm currently migrating all my data from Dropbox to OneDrive, and I need a few files but they're cued behind some 350Gb of data that was already uploading... I can't wait a few days to use them!

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    From observation, I think OneDrive uses first-in-first-out priority for syncing files. While this would be a nice option for some, I suspect most users would prefer a first-in-last-out, i.e. last-in-first-out, priority.

  • Joe Smith commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Allow option to prioritize syncing folders/files through right click in windows explorer. We have such massive files sometimes and need a way to "force sync" a file or move it up the priority tree.

  • Jedediah commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Here's a workaround I just discovered. It mainly works when you have large files blocking the upload but you need the small files to process first. Look in the upload center at the files that are hogging the upload, navigate to their directory, and rename them with a Z in front. For instance, Videos becomes ZVideos and Pictures becomes ZPictures. So far as I can tell, OneDrive either prioritizes alphabetically or by last modified so this resolves both issues and lets you easily find the files later. It's just as quick as a Microsoft implemented solution, and you don't have to wait another 5 years for them to put it on there.

  • Michael Hutchens commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    As per all the comments below it's insane that this wasn't included as a standard feature in the first release of OneDrive, as it's such an obvious problem that everyone comes across the moment they start using the platform on any meaningful level.

    Microsoft really needs to allocate some of their Azure sales team budget to the OneDrive/SharePoint engineering teams.

  • G R commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Users have no control over the sync process. I'd like to be able to set the priority, deselect some files from syncing (e.g. very large files so I could set them to run overnight) and see which files are being synced in a list, so that if there is an issue I can see what it is. Right now due to an upgrade error Windows is trying to sync 155GB of files, and I can't even see what they are until each file start to sync

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