OneDrive for Business Client Platform Support

OneDrive for Business technology enables file access, sharing, and sync with diverse clients and servers, but capabilities vary by platform. Summarized here are the most important OneDrive for Business clients (top), and their supported capabilities (left).

The OneDrive for Business client for Windows PCs offers the most extensive capabilities, including sync, which automatically copies a user’s local document libraries and offline changes to the server when the client is online, and then updates the user’s other devices with these changes. New sync clients for Windows and Mac OS X (not shown) are in preview and are planned by the end of 2015; these clients will work with both Microsoft-hosted OneDrive for Business document libraries and consumer OneDrive—but not other document libraries like those offered by Team Sites and Office 365 Group collaboration spaces—through a single interface.

On the Windows platform, Office applications such as Word (not shown) can also access and share Office documents stored in OneDrive for Business document libraries. Some Office applications can cache individual Office documents for offline editing, and the applications enable coauthoring with documents in document libraries. These capabilities work only with Office documents, not other types of files. Office and Office Online do not offer automated sync of entire document libraries, so they do not substitute for the Windows OneDrive for Business sync client.