On a dark and stormy night, a lone system administrator was awakened to a horrible sound. It was the sound of his phone ringing and his boss yelling at him to come into the office because the file storage server had crashed.
Through the sheets of falling rain, the cold blustery wind, and the monstrous puddles, he trudged. His head held low, and his coat wrapped tight around him. “Why am I heading back to the office when I could be snuggled up in bed?” he mused. “Why won’t the boss let me move our files to the Microsoft cloud like everybody else?”
Once at the office, our intrepid system administrator quickly found the source of the server outage. It was the boss’s toddler who somehow got behind the servers and started pulling all the power cords out of the machines for fun.
Soon the low hum of a server room returned, and our IT professional completed another on-site emergency recovery.
While this particular disaster may sound ridiculous, the underlying problem is all too familiar. Businesses have spent decades relying on file servers, shared drives, and other systems that can create headaches when they fail. Microsoft 365 gives organizations a better way to store, access, share, and collaborate on files in the cloud.
But once you decide to move your files to Microsoft 365, there’s another question to answer:
Where should your files actually go?
Getting Started with File Storage
If you’re moving away from traditional file servers, you’ve probably heard that Microsoft 365 gives you several options for file storage, including OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.
That can make things a little confusing. If all three can store files, what’s the difference?
The answer is less about choosing one application over another and more about understanding who the files belong to, who needs to work with them, and how those files need to be managed.
A good rule of thumb is to put files as close as possible to the people and processes that need them while keeping them organized logically. When employees have to hunt through folders, shared drives, and old email attachments to find what they need, productivity suffers.
OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint can help, but each has a different role to play.
If you just need a quick rule of thumb, start here:
OneDrive
OneDrive for Business is your personal work file repository. It’s designed for files that you’re working on yourself, personal work-in-progress, and documents that aren’t yet ready to be shared with a broader group.
Because your files are stored in the cloud, you can access them from your computer, browser, or mobile device. OneDrive also uses Files On-Demand, allowing you to see your cloud files in File Explorer without necessarily storing every file locally on your device.
OneDrive also makes it easy to work offline. Files that you’ve chosen to keep locally can be edited without an internet connection and synchronized when you’re back online.
If you’re drafting a presentation, working on a proposal, or creating a document that isn’t ready for collaboration, OneDrive is a great place to keep it. Once the file becomes a team resource, consider moving it to the appropriate Teams or SharePoint location.
One of OneDrive’s most useful features is its ability to synchronize your Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders. When configured, this can help ensure that important files stored in those locations are available across devices.
This can be especially helpful when, totally by accident, your laptop ends up in the ocean.
All you need to do is get a new laptop, sign in to your Microsoft account, and let OneDrive synchronize. Your files can be right where you left them.
❗Important Note: OneDrive synchronization is not the same thing as a comprehensive backup strategy. Sync helps keep files available across devices and in the cloud, but organizations should still have an appropriate backup and recovery strategy for their Microsoft 365 data.
When saving files from Word, Excel, and other Microsoft 365 applications, you can also save directly to OneDrive. AutoSave can then help keep your work synchronized as you make changes.
You can share files from OneDrive, too. You can send a link to a file or folder and control who has access. This is useful when you need to share something temporarily or collaborate with a small number of people.
If a file has become a resource for an ongoing team effort, however, it may be time to move it somewhere designed for team collaboration.
Teams
Microsoft Teams is designed for collaboration. When a team needs to work together on presentations, spreadsheets, project documents, meeting materials, or other shared files, Teams provides a convenient place to bring the conversation and the files together.
Each Team can have multiple channels, allowing files to be organized around different topics, projects, departments, or areas of work.
Files can be opened and edited collaboratively, often with multiple people working in the same document at the same time. Instead of emailing different versions of a presentation back and forth, team members can work from a shared file and see changes as they happen.
Teams also makes those files available alongside conversations, meetings, tasks, and other collaboration tools. This keeps the information people need close to the work they’re already doing.
❗Important Note: Teams isn’t actually a separate file-storage platform. The backbone of Teams is SharePoint.
Files uploaded to a standard Teams channel are stored in SharePoint. Teams provides the collaboration experience, while SharePoint provides the underlying file storage.
This is an important distinction because it means that when you’re working with files in Teams, you’re also benefiting from SharePoint capabilities behind the scenes.
Files shared in Teams chats work a little differently: those are stored in the sender’s OneDrive and shared with the people in the conversation.
Teams is available through desktop, web, and mobile applications, making it easy for team members to access their shared files wherever they’re working.
If your team is already working in Teams, there’s often no reason to send people somewhere else just to find the files they’re discussing. Keep the files close to the conversations and work that surround them.
SharePoint
And then we come to SharePoint.
SharePoint is the foundation behind much of Microsoft 365’s file collaboration experience. It provides the document libraries and sites that organizations can use to store, organize, secure, and manage business content.
But SharePoint is much more than a place to store files. It can serve as a structured content platform for departments, projects, teams, and entire organizations.
A SharePoint document library can provide much more structure and control than a traditional file share. You can configure permissions, views, version history, retention settings, content types, metadata, and other capabilities to help manage information throughout its lifecycle.
💡Pro Tip: Don’t automatically recreate your old file server in SharePoint. Moving the same maze of folders from a file server into SharePoint doesn’t solve the underlying problem. Before migrating content, take the opportunity to rethink how information should be organized and how people actually need to find it.
One of the biggest advantages of SharePoint is the ability to use metadata to classify and organize documents.
Instead of relying entirely on nested folders, you can associate files with information such as project, department, client, document type, status, or other characteristics. Users can then filter, sort, and search for information based on those attributes.
This becomes increasingly valuable as the amount of content grows. A folder structure that works for 50 documents may become frustrating when you’re managing thousands.
Want to learn more about using metadata? Check out our Using Metadata webinar to learn how metadata can make SharePoint content easier to organize and find.
SharePoint can also support more sophisticated document management processes. Workflows and automation can help route documents for review or approval, while retention and other governance capabilities can help organizations manage information according to their business and compliance requirements.
For more complex collections of documents, SharePoint also offers features such as document sets, which can group related files and apply consistent management practices to them.
How They All Work Together
So, which one should you use?
The trick is not to think of OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint as three competing file-storage systems. They are interconnected parts of the Microsoft 365 environment.
OneDrive is designed primarily for your individual work.
Teams is designed primarily for team collaboration.
SharePoint is designed for organizational content, structure, and management.
And because Teams uses SharePoint for its underlying file storage, the relationship between the three is even closer than it might initially appear.
All three can also make files accessible through File Explorer using OneDrive’s sync capabilities. This gives users a familiar way to work with cloud-based files without having to navigate to a website every time they need a document.
OneDrive syncs with File Explorer automatically. To sync Teams files, open the Teams app and to the team you want to sync. On the Files tab, there is a “Sync” option on the navigation row that will sync that team’s files. To do the same thing from the SharePoint site, access the document library of the team you want to sync. Along the top navigation row is a “Sync” option.
SharePoint File Sync
Teams File Sync
❗Important Note:Seeing a file in File Explorer doesn’t necessarily mean that file is stored locally.
With Files On-Demand, cloud files can appear in File Explorer while remaining stored in the cloud until needed. This helps users work with large collections of files without filling up their device’s hard drive.
When used together, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint provide a flexible file environment:
- OneDrive provides personal file storage and synchronization.
- Teams provides a collaborative workspace for teams and projects.
- SharePoint provides structured organizational storage and content management.
The File Storage Bottom Line
So, where should you put your files in Microsoft 365?
It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Is it your personal work-in-progress? Start with OneDrive.
Is it something your team needs to collaborate on? Teams is likely the right starting point.
Is it organizational content that needs structure, metadata, governance, or long-term management? SharePoint is probably the better fit.
The important thing is to think beyond simply asking, “Where can I store this file?”
Instead, ask: Who owns this information? Who needs access to it? How will people find it? And how does it need to be managed over time?
When you answer those questions first, choosing the right Microsoft 365 storage location becomes much easier.
And in the end, it matters less that your files are sitting in OneDrive, Teams, or SharePoint than that they aren’t sitting on a file server in a closet somewhere waiting for someone’s toddler to unplug it.
Below, you can download our Communication & Collaboration QuickStart Guide bundle, featuring OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. It’s a great jumping-off point that we recommend to our clients.
If you have questions about file storage or these applications, reach out, and we’ll get you connected with an M365 expert.
Get your free Quick Start Guides
Communication & Collaboration bundle features Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Outlook.
