Where are my files stored in Microsoft Teams?
If you’ve been working with Teams for a while, you may already be familiar with the ability to share files with your colleagues, either in a channel or in private chat.
However, you may be surprised to learn that no documents are stored within the Microsoft Teams application itself. Teams utilises document storage tools that already exist within the Microsoft 365 suite. These are OneDrive and SharePoint.
At a very high-level, any files sent via chat are stored in OneDrive, and those shared in Teams channels are stored in SharePoint, but we’ll get into a little more detail below.
As an end user, there is little reason for you to care where the files actually are, as you can get to them all within the Teams application regardless. But fully understanding where these files are stored will help you work more effectively within Teams and enable you to find your files quickly and easily when you should need them. From an admin perspective, it’s also useful to understand how the tools in the Microsoft suite work together.
Chat in Microsoft Teams - OneDrive
When chatting with an individual or group of people in Microsoft Teams, you can share a file by clicking the attachment icon and then uploading and sending a file from your computer.
When you share a file this way, the file is uploaded into your OneDrive in a folder called “Microsoft Teams Chat Files).
Under the sharing permissions for the file, you will also see that the individual or group that you shared it with have been given the appropriate permission to the file.
If a document has been shared with you via chat, you will be able to see these documents in the “Shared” section of OneDrive under “Shared With Me”.
Files within a Microsoft Team Channel - SharePoint
When you create a new Team in Teams, a dedicated SharePoint site is also created behind the scenes. Your users won’t normally access the SharePoint site and may not even be aware it exists, but the reason it is created is to allow files associated with the channels to be stored.
By clicking the “Open in SharePoint” button within Teams, you can navigate to the appropriate SharePoint site that has been created for the Team. It will have the same name as your Team.
Under the “Documents” library in the SharePoint site, a folder is also automatically created for each channel in your Team. The names of these folders will also match the names of your channels. This means that when users drop files into the Posts section of the channel, the files are automatically uploaded to the underlying SharePoint site and placed into the Channel’s folder.
As the files are stored in SharePoint, you also get all the document management benefits that SharePoint has to offer, such as creating sub folders to better organise your documents, or even better - assigning metadata to documents.
It also means you can easily search for the files that are stored within your Teams channels by using the search bar at the top of Teams. This will show files from across all your Teams channels.