New SkyDrive updates make sharing Office docs easier

Unfortunately this is a change I'm not too thrilled about. While what you say is true; it makes sharing easier, it also took away a /lot/ of the flexibility I came to appreciate so much.

For example; I create a folder 'MyFolder'. Now; I used to be able to fully control the kind of access. So determine which contacts could access it and which couldn't. Most of all I could see and verify the status of the share all the time.

But the only thing I can do now is request links without actually affecting the permissions on the folder itself anymore. As a business user this doesn't look very reliable to me (no offense intended) because now I have to fully rely on others to keep my data secured.

For example: I request a 'view' link for a folder. So far so good; I can now share this link with the people which I intended to give access.

But what happens when this link accidently finds its way to people who I didn't intend to share this document with?  Then you're basically left without any means to protect your data apart from entirely stopping the sharing again. But that effects the people who should have been able to see it.

SO I have very mixed feelings here. It makes some things easier, true, but it also took away a lot of the flexibility and security of the SkyDrive. Or is this an option which you reserve for paying customers (which would make sense I think) ?

The extra 20Gb (I noticed it went from 5 to 25) is pretty nice though.

And once again I come to discover that  some of my conclusions are based on wrong assumptions, though I still have one point of concern.

You can still share a file or directory with a selective group of contacts by using the e-mail function while sharing. My main gripe with it though is that you have to enter the names (or e-mail adresses) of these contacts manually and can no longer select these from a list of some sorts. That makes it a little harder.

Another problem which I encountered was when people had their Live account set to reject any kind of invitation, sometimes even without knowing it.

Alas; the good thing here is that I also discovered a new feature which can set aside any kind of problems...  The SkyDrive groups!  That feature is awesome; it fully allows you to setup an environment (either private or semi-public) which can be used to share information with a specific selection of people.

That really rocks, and quite frankly I feel that you should have mentioned this one as well in your message above ;-)

@ShelLuser, you can still restrict access to folders. Here are the steps, with the updated user interface:

1. Click Share on the folder.

2. Use Send Email to add each recipient that you want to grant permission.

3. Check the “Recipients must sign in to view” checkbox. This means that links that recipients receive are not forwardable and useable by others.

4. Click Share.

Thanks for your comments!  Yes, I totally overlooked that one and as said below; was a bit hasty with my assumption that you lost control entirely. Although I do have mixed feelings about the requirement to e-mail (this doesn't always work) the setup does work out quite well.

Glad you like Groups! Group members will need a Windows Live ID to sign in to the group... but they don't need to use Windows Live (@hotmail, @live) for their email; when they sign up for their Windows Live ID they can use any email address.

The "send a link' feature works well for a less restricted environment, if you want to send a link that people don't need to sign in to see.

Groups is not new, btw. I guess that's why I neglected to mention it... Totally focused on the update here :-)

no longer have the ability to move or rename files.  what happened?

How to prevent download my shared document just I want give show and updating permission ?

Is there any way to  change/move the location of a file on Skydrive? (Say I have a word document but created a new folder I'd like to put it in...)

I'm happy you finally changed it so I can share links to individual files. It seems to work fine on the desktop. However, whenever I get a read-only link accessible by anyone using the link, it does not work from an ipad. I keep getting redirected to a login screen.

"Move to" and "Rename" are on the right-click menu for files. I wonder why you're not seeing those. There's an exception for moving: if the file is in the SkyDrive "root" rather than a folder. I don't know of an easy way to move those, unfortunately.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, this update is to the web service only. Can you move files to other folders once they're in SkyDrive? Not what you're wanting, I know, but it would get the docs in the folders where they belong. Or, admittedly also inelegant: you could save locally and then go to SkyDrive in your browser, go to the folder where you want the doc, and upload it there.

If it's in a folder, there's a "Move to" command on the right-click menu. If it's in the SkyDrive "root" (not in a folder), I don't see an easy way to move it, unfortunately -- other than to download, and then upload to the new folder (and then delete the original so you don't wind up with 2 copies).

تطبيق جيد جداً

Move and Rename existed for the last year but disappeared yesterday...

Not sure what you're looking for... SkyDrive works with the Office desktop apps the same as it did prior to these udpates. For example, Save & Send in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (Share in OneNote) - in Office 2010 - saves directly to SkyDrive. In the Web Apps, use the Open command (Open in Word, Open in Excel, etc) to open the file directly from the browser into the desktop app.