Should I save files to OneDrive or SharePoint?

If you’re working on a file by yourself, save it to OneDrive. Your OneDrive files are private unless you share them with others, which is particularly useful if you haven’t created a team yet.

If you’re already working as a team — in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or Outlook—you should save your files where your team works, because OneDrive for work or school connects you to all your shared libraries, too.

When you need a new shared location to store team files, create a shared library right from OneDrive, add members, and start working together. These libraries are accessible within Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. And it’s easy to copy or move files where you and others need them.

What's the difference between OneDrive and SharePoint

OneDrive is the files experience for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Server, giving you access to all your work or school files, including the files that people share with you directly or through the teams you're working on. OneDrive provides a consistent, intuitive files experience across all your devices, including web, mobile, and the desktop of your Windows PC or Mac.

Behind the scenes, SharePoint in Microsoft 365 provides the content services for all files in Microsoft 365, including files you work with in Teams, Yammer, and Outlook. SharePoint is always there, helping manage and protect your files, and powering content collaboration across Microsoft 365. And beyond files, SharePoint enables portals, news, pages, lists, and a platform for business apps.

With both OneDrive and SharePoint in Microsoft 365, your files are stored in the cloud. You can sync either OneDrive or SharePoint files to your computer.

Moving documents from OneDrive to SharePoint

Sometimes documents that you start by yourself grow in importance and become relevant to a project. When that happens, it may make sense to copy or move files from OneDrive to SharePoint.

Troubleshoot moving documents from OneDrive for work or school

There are a few issues to keep in mind when moving documents from OneDrive and a shared library:

The steps for copying or moving files can vary between versions of OneDrive and SharePoint. For more info, see Move or copy files in SharePoint.

Hyperlinks to the original document stop working, because you’ve deleted the document in OneDrive. You may want to share the document you moved to the team site to give people on the site an updated, working link.

If people followed the original document, links in their newsfeed to that document will stop working. To restore this association, people will need to follow the document in its new location.

You might want to replace the original document in OneDrive with one that simply gives a link to the new file, and announces the new location.