Should I store my files in Microsoft Teams or in SharePoint?

To use a product efficiently, it’s important to understand a minimum about it. What it does, what can you do with it, what are the limitations, etc with SharePoint Services.

Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork. It allows for collaboration, chat, calls, meetings, and so much more! SharePoint Online is primarily a document management and intranet platform where you store, collaborate, and share information seamlessly across the organization, and is also part of Microsoft 365.

Note the key word here being collaboration. So it’s no surprise that they would interact with each other in some way.

What’s the relationship between the two?

Every time you create a new Team, the following are also created in the background:

Microsoft 365 Group (ex Office 365 Group)
SharePoint Online site
Exchange Online shared mailbox & calendar
OneNote notebook
Other services like Power BI, Planner.
As you can see above, a site is created to store your documents. Meaning that each time you share files in a Team, they are stored in the associated site in SharePoint! Not in Microsoft Teams.

Note: Files shared in private chats will be stored in the sender’s OneDrive for Business.

But where are my files exactly?
The exact location depends on which Team channel you share(d) them in. By default, there’s a General channel (which can’t be deleted), and the files shared in this channel will be stored in the SharePoint site, in the Documents library, within the General folder. If you create a Team channel called “Project A”, files shared in this channel will be stored in SharePoint under the folder called “Project A”, and so on…

This applies to ‘Standard’ channels. Private channels have a different architecture which consists in having a separate site with different permissions from the Team. More information is available on the official Microsoft documentation: Private Channels in Microsoft Teams.

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Hello, I am a professional SEO Expert & Write for us technology blog and submit a guest post on different platforms- we provide a good opportunity for content writers to submit guest posts on our website. We frequently highlight and tend to showcase guests.