Can an existing folder be added to OneDrive (without moving contents)?

Busta Uppa said:

Thinking about adding my music to OneDrive, since I just realized I have a ton of space (Office 365 subscription via my job), and the Groove music player would let me stream my collection for free.

First, it is important to remember that if your Office 365 subscription is a so called workplace account (Office 365 Business or Enterprise), "ton of space" you've got is on OneDrive for Business which can't be added to Groove. If your OneDrive sign in email is type Your.Name@YourOrganization.com, your O365 account is a workplace account.

Only if the O365 subscription you've got via your job is O365 Home or Personal and you sign in to it with a Microsoft account, only then can you use OneDrive in Groove.

An easy way to check if your OneDrive is personal or business is to see the OneDrive icon in system tray. If your OneDrive icon in system tray is blue (#1 in screenshot) it is a OneDrive for Business account and can't be added to / used with Groove. If the icon is white (#2), it is a personal OneDrive and can be used in Groove:



If you have both blue and white icon showing, you have both OD for business and OD Personal. In this case you can add the personal OD account to Groove. However, if the "ton of space" is on OD for Business, it does not help you because with Groove you could only use the personal account.

Busta Uppa said:

Is there any way to have OneDrive "watch" the music in its current location, like how I might add it to a local library folder? I'm antsy about just moving everything, plus the music wouldn't fit on my main hard drive anyway (it's why I started using an external in the first place).

Short answer: no.

All OneDrive folders must be on same location, subfolders of main OneDrive folder. You cannot add folders from outside OneDrive main folder to OneDrive without moving them under main OneDrive folder.

Busta Uppa said:

I've looked around and it seems like I might be able to select a new location for OneDrive if I re-configure it from scratch. However, would this force me to keep all my work files on that external drive too?

Selecting a new location for OneDrive moves everything, OneDrive content cannot be stored in two or more locations.

Kari

You are welcome.

Very easy to do this using symbolic junction links.

From an admin command prompt, type

mklink /j c:\users\yourname\onedrive\folder1 X:\folder1

where X is the drive letter of the external drive containing your folder containing music files.

See example below. I have a folder on external drive E containing one file - black.png

After creating junction link, there is a dummy folder in the one drive structure, and if you list it, you see the file.

It has not been physically copied to onedrive.

Beauty is you can now sync that onedrive folder to the cloud. If you add a file to the external drive folder, and you have it syncing, the file will automatically be synced to the cloud.

It remains on cloud if you detach external drive.

Of course, you need to make sure external drive is always given the same drive letter.

If you want to remove the symbolic link type

rd c:\users\yourname\onedrive\folder1

This deletes dummy folder AND folder in cloud. If you want to retain in cloud, rename folder in cloud first.