Where does this document go — OneDrive for Business or SharePoint?

Office 365 can generate a lot of questions from enterprise users, but few reach the magnitude — in volume, in exasperation — as, “Where do I save my files?”

That’s because corporate Office 365 subscriptions come with two competing destinations: the personal storage space managed by OneDrive for Business and the most unsettling public, or at least collaborative, document libraries of SharePoint and its mutating team sites.

At one level, there’s no right answer. As long as you save the document or file somewhere — assuming you can remember where that somewhere was — everything is good.

But that won’t make the question retreat. So we’ve tried to come up with a round-up of advice in the form of answers to the sub-queries underlying Office 365’s biggest: Where does this document go?

What’s OneDrive for Business? OneDrive is the per-user online storage space allotted to each commercial license of Office 365, as well as the name of the service that manages the storage and the application that controls syncing files between devices and the cloud.

(While OneDrive is also available as part of an on-premises SharePoint Server, the vast majority of users have OneDrive storage through Office 365.)

Each Office 365 subscriber receives 1TB — that’s a full terabyte — of storage space to park in OneDrive.

What’s a SharePoint team library? Like OneDrive, a library is online storage for documents and other files. Unlike OneDrive, SharePoint’s libraries — the giveaway … “team” — were designed for sharing those documents and collaborating when creating new ones.

There are limits to SharePoint storage — 25TB per SharePoint site — but for many customers, the data allowance essentially makes libraries (collectively, not individually) infinite.

SharePoint Online, the umbrella service that provides team libraries, comes with most — but not all — commercial Office 365 plans, can be purchased separately and has an on-premises doppelgänger in the form of SharePoint Server. (Last fall’s release of version 2019 is the latest.)

Okay, now I know why I’m confused. OneDrive for Business and SharePoint libraries seem cut from the same cloth. Are they the same thing, just differently named? Well, they’re both cloud storage, so there’s that. And they’re both provided to most people via Office 365 licensing.

Although SharePoint preceded OneDrive by years — the former launched in 2001, the latter in 2007 — and OneDrive was largely a response to the popularity of easy-to-use online storage services such as Dropbox, there is substantial overlap between the pair. (That’s why people ask where they should store documents; if there were only one Microsoft-provided place, no one would have questions.)

Specific to that overlap, a couple of points. First, OneDrive for Business relies on the same core SharePoint technologies that SharePoint libraries do; in many ways, OneDrive for Business is nothing more than a special kind of pre-provisioned folder within SharePoint. Second, Microsoft has been busy adding to and updating OneDrive for Business to the point that it now sports most of the collaboration and sharing features offered by SharePoint libraries.

So, yes, they have much in common. But not everything.

When should I save to OneDrive for Business? When the document should remain private, either temporarily or permanently, or there’s no need to share the document with more than one or two others.

Here’s a cruder guideline but one easier to remember: Save to OneDrive when the document or file is yours.

Why? Because files stored in OneDrive are private by default. Yes, it’s possible to share documents from OneDrive, but awarding permissions for individual files or folders requires the work of selecting those who will have access to the document(s) and designating the access they’ll have (only view-and-print or edit?).

That’s a hassle any way you look at it, and as the number of people you share stuff with expands, it can mutate into an unwieldy and error-prone process that’s as much time-suck as anything.

When should I save to SharePoint? In its simplest form, the answer is: When the document belongs to a group in the organization, not to you alone.

That means files and documents sent to SharePoint should be those that need to be viewed and edited by more than one or two others.

Keep the word library in mind when you think of SharePoint; one book does not make a library and one document does not make a sharing repository. When a collection of files and documents must be available to several people — say, a workgroup team collaborating on a specific project — SharePoint should be the destination.

Why? You may not have a choice. Unlike OneDrive, which is personal — remember the One in the label — SharePoint is a corporate/company resource. Someone else likely is in charge of permissions, meaning that person decides who has access to what SharePoint sites, thus libraries, thus documents. And management probably has laid down the rules about what should be saved to SharePoint, whether for collaboration or because a workflow has been crafted to automatically move a document along a reviewing procedure.

I’m working on a draft. Where should I save it? In OneDrive for Business. And yes, that means even if your workplace has a workflow that requires sign-off by co-workers and/or managers.

Once the draft is in better shape — not a draft, in other words — then you can move it to the pertinent SharePoint library for sharing, viewing or collaborative editing.

How do I move documents from OneDrive for Business to a SharePoint library? Simple. Select the files (or complete folders) in OneDrive, then choose the item “Move to” from the menu bar or the pop-up menu that appears after clicking the vertical ellipsis. In the ensuing pop-up, select the destination from the SharePoint libraries listed, or if it’s not visible, click “Browse sites” to find the appropriate library.

This document will be my contribution to the new project. Where should I save it? To the project’s SharePoint library, if one exists. If one doesn’t and you have the necessary rights and permissions, create a new library for the project, then save the document there.

If the project does not yet have a dedicated library and you don’t have the necessary permissions to create one yourself, save the document to the standard Documents library. You can then move it to the appropriate library later – after an admin or the project manager creates it.

When I share a file in a Teams channel, where does it go? To the team’s SharePoint folder. That’s found in the “Files” tab at the top of each channel.

Note: When you share in a one-on-one or group chat inside Teams, the file is stored in your OneDrive for Business folder.

While this may sound confusing, it’s easy to remember once you understand that OneDrive for Business is for sharing with very small numbers and SharePoint is for sharing with the entire group.

(And at some point, that confusion may grow, as Microsoft is working on connecting one’s personal OneDrive storage area — which is different than the Office 365-provided OneDrive for Business — with Teams.)

We use Office 365 Groups to quickly assemble a bunch of people who can share a single inbox and calendar. Where do we save files for the group, say those attached to email? In that instance, there’s no saving required, since by attaching a document, the recipient gets their own copy. But if you wanted to share that document with everyone in the group, you would post it to the group’s SharePoint document library by uploading it there.

We’re a small shop … just two people. Where should we save documents? Even if you have a more capable Office 365 plan — say Office 365 Business Premium, which runs $150 per person per year — and has both OneDrive for Business and SharePoint, Microsoft recommends that the two of you “use OneDrive and share files back and forth.”

SharePoint and its document libraries would be overkill in this instance.

For larger small businesses with several employees, Microsoft recommends using OneDrive for Business and SharePoint together.

What are some other scenarios where saving to OneDrive for Business makes the most sense? Here are some:

• When there is no appropriate SharePoint library; you can copy or move the document later from OneDrive.
• You want to control who can access the file or document.
• The document or file is the project…there’s no need for auxiliary tools like a calendar or an intranet site.
• You’ll use multiple devices to construct the document; OneDrive’s sync feature puts the document within easy access from any OneDrive-equipped device (yes, OneDrive can sync SharePoint libraries as well, but OneDrive is much easier for employees to grasp).
• You’ll only share this document a time or two, or for a very limited time.

What are some other scenarios where saving to SharePoint makes the most sense? Under these circumstances:

• The organization has check-in workflows that assign documents to others (yes, OneDrive for Business has this, too, but SharePoint’s the better choice for company-wide policies on these kinds of things).
• The document will be published for all in the organization to read.
• The document will be made available to outsiders, say, clients or partners.
• You’re fine with others — your manager, perhaps the IT organization — determining who has access to the document or file.
• The organization wants documents and files available in a central repository; that’s SharePoint.

Any last words on OneDrive versus SharePoint document libraries? Oh, we’re all about words.

If all else fails, think of the document’s destination this way:

If it’s private, OneDrive will keep it quiet.

If it’s communal, SharePoint gets my approval.

Matt Wade