🔗 These are the 8 ways to share files in Microsoft Office 365 and Teams

Microsoft offers several solutions within Office 365 to share files and documents with colleagues, external contacts, friends and business associates.

I elaborated on the 8 most common scenarios in this article. If you know of any other scenario, be sure to comment at the bottom of this article.

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1. Share personal files through Microsoft Teams

How to share a personal file via OneDrive in Teams?

From Microsoft, select Teams and choose Cloud Storage, OneDrive.

Then select the file, and create a link by copying the URL.

Then you can forward web link to internal colleagues, or external contacts.

For this you no no external sharing of the team site itself to allow.

This url may include a OneDrive or Microsoft Teams . An unfortunate practical experience is that it is not possible to share a URL from Microsoft Teams if the user is not part of the Team.

2. Share personal files via OneDrive with internal and external contacts

Personal files are often placed on your own OneDrive for Business. You can access these through Microsoft Teams and via the Web.

1. You can start from Microsoft Teams or from the portal you see in the 2nd screenshot. https://portal.office.com
2. Press open in OneDrive.

Press Share to share a OneDrive file with internal or external contacts.

Choose to send the link to a colleague or external contact.

3. Share personal files via email to remote users

Sharing personal documents from your own OneDrive is done via https://portal.office.com, then click on OneDrive, select your file and click Share.

Example: how to share an Excel file in office 365 with external people.

Example: Sharing a Word, PowerPoint or OneNote file with colleagues.

4. Microsoft Teams file sharing with internal and external users

Below you can find 4 scenarios for collaborating with external users. If you collaborate well with external keep your documents on the organization's side, and add guests who can consult or edit.

1. Direct chat
2. Share an entire Microsoft Teams
3. Setting up a meeting with external users
4. Meeting with non-Microsoft Teams users

5. Send attachment by email in Office 365

It is still perfectly possible to send files as attachments by e-mail. It is much easier not to do this and share the link. That way, the document or "the right version" stays in your own hands and everyone can collaborate on it.

Select attach as copy

6. Via Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint directly share a file

Sharing Excel, Word or PowerPoint (or other) files can be done very easily within Office 365. Below I explain how to get started.

Press Share at the top to share the file.

Select the specific access you wish to give.

7. Inviting people from outside the organization into Microsoft Teams

Adding guests to Teams is easy. If you have permission to do so as a team owner, you can add participants to the entire team. This way you don't have to share separate documents but can share a folder or an entire team.

Navigate to your team that you wish to add a guest to. Based on their email address, add the user.

You may get a notification to confirm that you allow third parties or externals to be added. You may accept this. -> Press Add Member.

It is also possible to use shared channels with Teams to collaborate with external contacts. (Between multiple tenants)

Enter your extere contact person in this wizard. and press Add or add.

The recipient will see in their Microsoft teams an icon of the teams in which they have access.

So adding 700 people in 30 seconds is also possible. How, you can read here.

8. Inviting guests in SharePoint Online

In Office 365 groups or Microsoft Teams or directly SharePoint you can add guests or colleagues.

Navigate to the documents library within SharePoint, select the document you wish to share -> press share -> choose the recipient and press send.

Also read

How to securely send files using OneDrive for consumers?
How to use file request in OneDrive for business ?
How to restore files with version history SharePoint & Onedrive?

About the author

Jasper

Welcome to 365tips.be. On this website you can read articles and experiences about Office 365 with a focus on Microsoft Teams. Do you have any questions? Comment at the bottom of this blog post. Also help others by asking questions at the bottom of the articles. This blog is created in Dutch. The multilingual website is offered with best-effort machine translation.

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