Shared Drives vs SharePoint vs OneDrive: What Goes Where

One of the first questions I get from businesses that have just moved to Microsoft 365 is: "Where are we supposed to save things?" Microsoft gives you OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams (which uses SharePoint behind the scenes), and nobody explains when to use which one.

Here is the practical answer for a small business, without the Microsoft marketing around it.

OneDrive: your personal work cloud drive

Think of OneDrive as your personal work filing cabinet, accessible from any device. Files here sync to your laptop so you can work offline, and they are backed up to the cloud automatically. No one else can see your OneDrive files unless you specifically share them.

Use OneDrive for:

• Work in progress that is not ready to share: draft documents, notes, working files
• Personal work documents that do not need to be shared with the team
• Your desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders (OneDrive can sync these automatically)

Do not use OneDrive for: anything the team needs to access without you being directly involved. If you are off sick and a colleague needs that spreadsheet urgently, OneDrive files are not accessible unless you have shared them individually.

SharePoint: your company shared drive

SharePoint is the replacement for the office server or the shared drive (the old S: drive or G: drive that everyone mapped). Files stored in SharePoint belong to the organisation, not to an individual. They are accessible to everyone with the right permissions, whether you are in the office, working from home, or on holiday.

Use SharePoint for:

• Shared company documents: templates, policies, procedures, company information
• Ongoing project files that multiple people need to access and edit
• Client work files and records
• Anything that should remain accessible if someone leaves the business

SharePoint sites can be set up with different permissions so finance sees the finance files, operations sees the operations files, and the whole company sees company-wide documents. This is significantly better than a shared drive where everyone sees everything.

Teams: SharePoint with a conversation layer

Teams is not a separate file storage system. When you save a file in a Teams channel, it goes into that Team SharePoint folder. Teams just adds conversations, video calls, and chat on top of the same file storage.

Use Teams for:

• Files that are directly related to ongoing team conversations
• Documents being actively worked on as part of a project team

The practical rule: if a file goes with a conversation, put it in Teams. If it is a standalone document the team needs to find independently, put it in SharePoint directly.

The simple rule

• OneDrive: your stuff, your drafts, your personal work files
• SharePoint: the company stuff, shared files, anything two or more people need
• Teams: files that belong to a conversation or project team

The old habit of saving everything to the desktop or the local C: drive needs to stop. Those files are not backed up, not accessible remotely, and gone the moment a laptop fails.

Making the migration

If your business currently has files scattered across local drives, a server, Dropbox, and someone personal Google Drive, getting everything into the right place in Microsoft 365 is a project worth doing properly. It involves:

• Mapping out what files exist and where they currently live
• Deciding on a SharePoint structure that makes sense for how you work
• Setting up permissions so people see what they should
• Migrating files and training staff on where to find things and where to save new ones

Done well, the result is a business where files are always accessible, always backed up, and findable by anyone who needs them.

If you would like help setting up a sensible SharePoint structure for your business, or migrating from an old server or Dropbox, get in touch.

Microsoft 365 setup and support

ClearPath IT Services helps small businesses in Kent, Medway and South East London get the most from Microsoft 365.