When you don’t have Internet access, your Windows 8.1 SkyDrive content remains out of reach. Wouldn’t it be nice to keep a copy of your SkyDrive folders on both your computer and SkyDrive, with your computer synchronizing their contents automatically? Well, you can.
To make your SkyDrive files constantly available to your PC, right-click the SkyDrive folder in your Navigation Pane and choose Make Available Offline from the pop-up menu. Windows copies your SkyDrive folder to your computer and automatically syncs SkyDrive with your PC whenever you connect with the Internet.
That option works fine for desktop PCs as well as the standard SkyDrive storage size of 7GB. However, you’ll run out of room on a small-capacity tablet or laptop. Similarly, you may run out of room if you’ve paid extra for a large SkyDrive storage space.
In those cases, right-click only your most essential SkyDrive folders and choose Make Available Offline. That trick leaves most of SkyDrive in the clouds but keeps your essential folders synced and available at all times.
If you need more SkyDrive storage space, Microsoft is eager to sell it: Open the Charms bar, choose Settings, click Change PC Settings, click SkyDrive, and click the File Storage area’s Buy More Storage button.