Office 365 and OneDrive offer various options for working from various locations and on different devices. This offers you:

• the possibility to work with Office applications via the online Office portal or with apps on a smartphone or tablet.
• the possibility to securely save files from your university workstation to OneDrive.
• easy access to your files.
• the ease of working together online – and saving travel and time. 

Staff who are guests of the university may not have automatic access to Office 365 and OneDrive. If you need access but you are unable to install Office 365, please contact the helpdesk (phone) 8888 to request access.  

You will find Microsoft Office in the basic software package on your PC. Office gives you access to applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Office 365 offers you the customary applications and also access to cloud storage via OneDrive.

From your university workplace you can work in two different ways in Office 365 and OneDrive:

• Install Office 365 and OneDrive via Software Center (type "Software Center" in the Windows search bar).
• Log in via the Office portal just like from your home workplace.

More information and a step-by-step plan can be found in the helpdesk portal.

Would you like to have your files on hand at any time? Use OneDrive, which is part of your Office 365 account. To open OneDrive:

• Either go via your browser to portal.office.com (log in with your university account: <your ULCN user name>@vuw.leidenuniv.nl and your usual password. You may need MFA/Multi Factor Authenticator as well).
• Or use the Office apps that you can install on your PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

For more information, go to the helpdesk portal: OneDrive: Frequently Asked Questions.

The benefits of using OneDrive

Your files are available anywhere

• OneDrive is the online alternative for your university P-Drive. With OneDrive you have access to your files anywhere, on different devices, using a browser or Office apps.
• You can also install Office on your own laptop or desktop.

Ample storage space and always backed up

• In OneDrive you have ample cloud storage space, significantly more than you would get from most commercial or free cloud services.
• You do not need to worry about saving your files while you work. On a university laptop, synchronisation is switched on as a standard, so your files are automatically saved in the cloud. If you are working on another device, you may need to ensure that the settings for synchronisation with OneDrive are correct, to avoid losing any work.
• Uploading and downloading to and from OneDrive is easy: simply drag a locally saved file from the Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder to the OneDrive file list. Similarly, you can choose to download OneDrive files to work on them locally on your device.

Secure storage

• Files that you save in OneDrive are more securely stored than in most commercial or free cloud services like GoogleDocs or Dropbox. The university has come to an agreement with Microsoft about the security of data (including encryption, storage location, compliance with GDPR and security requirements).
• MFA (Multi Factor Authentication) gives you secure access to your files via the Office portal. Read more about working online with Office 365 in the Office portal.
• It is also possible to add extra security to specific Office files using sensitivity labels.

Easily share and work together on documents

• You can share files and folders in OneDrive inside and outside the university, as long as the other persons also use Office. You determine which files you wish to share, and whether others may edit or only read these documents.  
• It is possible to work on a file together with someone else, if you have assigned that person editing rights. In OneDrive, there is no problem of different document versions: your files are always available and up to date. But for files that you wish to store or work on as a group Microsoft Teams is a better location.

Read more on how to use OneDrive in the helpdesk portal: OneDrive: Frequently Asked Questions. The terms of use for OneDrive (in Dutch) can also be found in the helpdesk portal.

See also the Frequently asked questions about privacy en security.