Microsoft Limits The Amount Of Data Onedrive Users Can Share

Microsoft’s OneDrive is a free cloud-based storage the company offers to anyone with a Microsoft Account. However, users of OneDrive saw a couple of restrictions lately that will sour their relationship with the service a bit.

After reducing the free amount of storage from 15GB to 5GB, Microsoft is now introducing one sharing limitation that will control the volume of data free OneDrive users can share. This limitation was spotted by a German website, Deskmodder, who reported about the error message that shows up when users reach the limit of shared data. The error message says (translated from German):

“You have recently reached the limit for approvals. Some people may not be able to access your shared items . Try to share with fewer people, or sharing fewer large files.”

In order to be able to share a bigger amount of data, users will need to subscribe to Office 365. As a reminder, the Office 365 subscription is also required to increase OneDrive’s storage from regular 5GB to 15GB (but we have a trick for that).

This was a stealth move by Microsoft as the company was silent about it and didn’t release any official statement. It’s obvious that Microsoft wants to encourage more users to buy the Office 365 subscription with limitations like these, but it actually can turn bad for OneDrive. Rival cloud storage services, like Google Drive or Dropbox, don’t have these limitations and are both available for free, so users easily recognize them as better options than OneDrive.

Tell us in the comments below: will you continue to use OneDrive despite all these limitations or will you migrate to another cloud storage? Also, are you willing to buy the Office 365 subscription just to use OneDrive’s full capability?