Use SkyDrive Pro with a Office 365 2010 account

I want to keep my stuff in SharePoint, but also have it synched down to a local location. Should be cake with SkyDrive Pro, but my 365 account hasn’t been upgraded yet. So, what to do… Well, it turns out as long as you have the SkyDrive Pro app installed, you can still do it with your 2010 ‘era’ site.

UPDATE: SkyDrive Pro client is now (5/22/13) available for download for Windows. More info can be found HERE.

  1. Create an account on the NEW Office365 – the latest ‘2013’ version. At the present time existing accounts are being upgraded while new accounts are all on 2013. What we’re doing  can be one of the free demo accounts – we just want to get the SkyDrive Pro client installed.
  2. Create a user account and have the user log in to the account.
  3. In the top navigation bar towards the right side, click on the ‘SkyDrive’ link. If this is a new account, you might need to do some basic configuration steps – it’s creating a My Site for you, etc.
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  4. Just below the top navigation bar and further to the right, click on the ‘Sync’ button and follow through a few dialogue boxes.

As I understand it, configuring your first library to sync locally will get the app installed and working locally. By default, the initial Sync action uses your My Site document library as the default library to configure – the “Share with Everyone” library. Once this is set up, you should have a synched folder that shows up in your Favorites in File Explorer called ‘SkyDrive Pro’. You can remove this sync folder later.

Now that you’ve got the app installed, let’s go ahead and add a 2010 library to be synched.

In your Windows tray, you’ve now got a SkyDrive Pro icon (the blue one) – you may also have a ‘normal’ white SkyDrive icon as well…
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  1. Right-click on the SkyDrive Pro icon and select ‘Sync a new library’
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  2. Paste your 2010 version 365 document library URL in there… it’ll now create a ‘SharePoint’ folder in addition to the ‘SkyDrive Pro’ folder and sync your 2010 library in there.
    image

Good to go!

I don’t know if there’s a way to get the SkyDrive Pro install without doing this, but this process does work.  Smile

Oh, and here is an article from a MS blog on it as well: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/sync-a-library-to-your-computer-HA102832401.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA102822076

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