This makes total sense as the Site Collection (OneDrive site collection that is) is private to OneDrive owner

You will notice that by default, the OneDrive Site Collection Administrator is the owner of the OneDrive account.

Find the user’s profile you want to allow someone else access to, click the small drop-down next to the name, then choose Manage site collection owners.

On the next screen, click User Profiles.

Once in the SharePoint Admin Center, click on User Profiles.

If you want to allow any employee to access someone else’s OneDrive

After just a few seconds, you will be presented with a direct link to employee’s OneDrive account.

Under Access section, click on Access files.

Check the box next to user’s name whose OneDrive account you are trying to access, then click OneDrive Settings.

From left-hand-panel, choose Users > Active Users.

To understand the difference between a Company Administrator (also known as Global Office 365 Administrator) and SharePoint Administrator – check out this post. If you are anything else than this – steps below will not work.

Make sure you are a licensed Office 365 Global Administrator.

If you are an Office 365 Global Administrator

Allow any other user to access someone else’s OneDrive account (this might be a good option to use if say, you want a colleague to access their departing team member’s OneDrive).

Access yourself, if you are a Global Administrator.

There are two ways to access someone else’s OneDrive: How to gain access to an employee’s OneDrive account I tried to access John’s OneDrive, being a Company Administrator (Office 365 Global Admin) and this is a message I got when I did that: Even Global Office 365 administrators do not have access to other users’ OneDrive without steps outlined below.

Files and folders can only be seen by other employees if they have been shared by the OneDrive owners themselves. With this post, I would like to share a few techniques for you to do this.īefore we proceed further, it is important to note that user’s OneDrive account is private by default. The bottom line is – you need to access someone else’s OneDrive. Or, maybe someone just left on vacation and forgot to publish a very important Sales Proposal to SharePoint. Your employee left or is about to leave the organization, but has left lots of valuable intellectual property in his or her OneDrive repository.

Setup onedrive account