Microsoft officially announced it's axing the Groups feature
in OneDrive in the coming weeks, meaning stalwarts still using the online
storage service for collaborating will need to start migrating their data to
new locations. This shouldn't come as a surprise, though: The feature has been
largely shuttered for months. As it is, users haven't been able to create new
groups; they can only work within existing ones.
However, that's no longer the case: People who still use
Groups received an email today informing them that the feature will not be
available after October 16th, 2015, and that any data stored in a group file
will be deleted. If you want to keep your data currently contained in Groups,
follow these instructions to migrate it to a different folder in OneDrive. This
means you're essentially downloading files to a desktop, then uploading them
into a different folder in OneDrive. (Oddly, these instructions claim that
Groups will no longer be available after September 30th 2015 but our contacts
at Microsoft have assured us that October 16th is the correct date.) The email
also contains instructions on how to share files and folders after moving them
out of Groups. It's worth mentioning that individual OneDrive accounts already
include free access to Office's online version, which has real-time co-editing
so it doesn't matter if a file is owned by a group or a single person.