Upgrade from Office Live Workspace to Windows Live SkyDrive

Tying in with the release of Office 2010 and Office Web Apps, Microsoft (News - Alert) is closing the door on its Office Live Workspace and moving users to Windows Live SkyDrive to store files online.

Those of you who still have Office Live Workspace accounts will be prompted to upgrade to SkyDrive the next time you access the service, courtesy of Microsoft’s current opt-in process. After logging in, you’ll see an “Upgrade now” button. Click on that, and Microsoft will begin the upgrade process, moving your documents from Workspace to SkyDrive. Depending on the number of documents, the process should take less than 30 minutes. During the upgrade, you can still view your Workspace documents, though you can’t edit or share them.

After the upgrade is complete, you’ll receive an email and see a message in your browser both telling you that your documents are now available on SkyDrive. Click on the Go to SkyDrive button in your browser window, and you’ll now be able to access your documents on SkyDrive. In SkyDrive, you’ll see a new folder called Office Live Documents holding all of the files that were moved. You can then organize those files into existing or new SkyDrive folders.

After you move over to SkyDrive, you’ll no longer be able to access your Office Live Workspace. If someone who hasn’t yet upgraded tries to open one of your shared documents, that person will also be prompted to upgrade to SkyDrive in order to continue accessing the document.

After you’ve migrated to SkyDrive and no longer need to access Office Live Workspace, you can also uninstall the Office Live Workspace Add-in. At some point, the current opt-in period will end and all existing Office Live Workspace accounts will automatically be moved over to SkyDrive.

SkyDrive offers 25GB of online storage space where you can manage, save, and share your documents, images, and other types of files. Since SkyDrive can integrate directly with the new Office Web Apps, you can also edit your Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents via your Web browser. And with the current beta and upcoming final release of the new Windows Live Sync, you’ll also be able to use SkyDrive to store synced copies of documents from your computers and other devices.

Microsoft offers a Web page that explains how the upgrade process works and how your documents will be filed in SkyDrive and a Q&A page focusing on common issues regarding the upgrade.