Navigating Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office Online) really can do nearly anything that a full word processing suite can do, but some of the functions are so well hidden—or are so confusing—that people assume it’s a crippled junior version. The most difficult functions to figure out are all related to file management (deleting, renaming, moving, or copying files and creating file folders).

The basic structure

Microsoft 365 saves everything on its own cloud server, OneDrive. (When you use the “Save As” function and Microsoft says it’s saving something to your Documents folder, they mean OneDrive, not the folder on your computer.) The challenge is that the user is presented with quite a variety of menus which look almost identical, but have different functions:

1. Quick access: This is the menu you see when you first arrive. This one allows you to open recent files you have previously worked on. All the files from all the different applications display here. (Note: This menu does not understand file folders, so you will simply see all the files you have worked on in chronological order.)
2. My Content: This menu is in the grey band on the left of the screen. It also appears to list any attachments you have received in email, but not the email items themselves.
3. Seven application-specific menus (Word, Excel, etc.). The ones above present a list of everything you have done in Office, all together, but these separate out the files you made with specific programs. You can start a new file from one of these menus.
   • You can also begin a new file by clicking the ⊕ Create item in the left grey menu
   • Your email is available in the Outlook menu.
4. OneDrive: This is the menu which gives you access to My files, which is the only menu which allows you to rename, move, or delete a file. Unfortunately, it’s hidden.
   • One oddity is that the OneDrive menu keeps the names of files you have deleted. The file itself may be gone, but the name of the file will apparently stay there forever. There seems to be no way to delete the name of a deleted file, but clicking on it will not open anything.

Finding OneDrive

• Click the nine-dot icon at the top left, and select OneDrive.

Now that you are in

1. Select My files on the left.
2. If you hover your mouse pointer over the file’s name, a circle appears next to it. Click that circle to put a checkmark in it. Now a three dot menu appears to the right of “Print” and you can use that to do such things as deleting and renaming the file.
3. The “My files” directory allows you to create file folders and move items to these folders, but none of the other sub-menus recognize file folders. Your files will simply appear there in chronological order.

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.

The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Ashland University.

Revised 5/29/23 • Page author: Curtis Allen • e-mail: callen@ashland.edu.