Add an admin account to the users OneDrive for Business (via UI)

14-Jan-2023 14-Jan-2023 403 words 2 minutes

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Contents

In this blog post, we’re going to add an admin account into a user’s OneDrive for Business via the interface (UI) in 2 different ways. There might be situations where you need to have access to the user’s personal area (aka OneDrive for Business). For example, you might need to create folders pre-migration, or quickly “audit” something.

The below 2 methods require you to have an admin account (i.e.: SharePoint admin, or Global Admin) as we’re going to use the Microsoft 365 Admin Center & the SharePoint Admin center.

Using the Microsoft 365 Admin Center

Once you’re logged into the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, navigate to Users –> Active users on the left pane. Click on a user’s display name, and this will open the right pane where you can see the OneDrive tab.

Just underneath, click on the link Create link to files and you’ll now have access to the user’s OneDrive for Business.
If you navigate to the URL newly created, you’ll be able to see the user’s files.

In the screenshot below, you can see I’m accessing a user’s OneDrive with my own account 🙂

Using the SharePoint Admin Center

When using the SharePoint Admin Center, we need to go to the User Profiles. Navigate to More features –> click Open in User profiles. Under the “People” section, click on Manage User Profiles.

Search for a user and when hovering the line, you’ll see a very small arrow (left of the “preferred name” label). Click on it to expand the menu, and select Manage Site Collection Owners.

By default, only the user account will be Primary & secondary Site Collection Administrators. And that makes perfect sense as OneDrive For Business is the user’s personal area.

You can only add your account into the secondary Site Collection Administrators. When done, click OK.

If you navigate to the correct URL, you have the same experience we’ve seen before 😉

And as a matter of fact, when using the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, clicking on the newly created link is the same thing in the background. It’s adding your account into the users profile as a (secondary) site collection administrator.

Use PowerShell instead of the UI

If you need to add an account on multiple users OneDrive for Business, you need to use PowerShell. Using thr UI is not the appropriate solution as it will be too time consuming!

Thanks for reading! 🙂