Posting and Sharing Documents in Teams

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About this lesson

Learn how to upload documents to Teams using Teams chat and the Files tab. Also, you'll see how to synchronize Teams files with your desktop and how Teams helps you avoid version conflicts. You'll see how you can edit documents in the browser or in Microsoft Office and how to obtain a URL to share with anyone who can access the Teams files.

 

Quick reference

Posting and Sharing Documents in Teams

You can post and share files in Teams in several ways. 

When to use

Upload a document to Teams when you need team members or colleagues to access files rather than sending them through email. This avoids time-consuming "versioning" issues and insures everyone sees the same copy.

Instructions

There are many ways to upload a file to teams.

- Files Tab: Think of these files as "files shared in the channel." This a listing of files that have been shared to the Files tab or uploaded in the Teams chat.

- File menu option on the left sidebar: Think of these files as "all files shared with all Teams." This listing is the global view of files across teams.

- Teams Posts (chat): files you upload in the Teams Posts feed are automatically shared with the Team. The fact you uploaded a file is shown in the Teams chat listing. This makes it easy to call attention to important files as people who have marked the channel as important, will receive a notification the file has been uploaded.

- Sync: If you sync your Teams files to your PC, you can drag and drop a file to your local synch folder and it will be uploaded to Teams.

Sharing files in teams is easy. Most files are automatically available to anyone on your Team. If not, just send the URL. Note that the URL will not work for people outside of your organization unless they are specifically joined as a Team member.  Should you wish to share a file with someone who is not Teams member, you can create a URL for them in OneDrive. OneDrive allows you to create a URL that is good for anyone that has the URL. You cannot do that in that in Teams.

Hints & tips

  • For the purposes of working with the Microsoft 365 Trial account, do not select "Open in Desktop App" when you open a file in Teams. Also, do not select to Sync documents to your PC if you already have an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 account.
  • You can download a file by opening the file and then clicking, File, then click Save As. You will then see a Download option. You can also select Download by selecting the file in the list of files and click on the ellipses (...).
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  • 00:04 Normally, whenever you want to share files with individuals or team members,
  • 00:08 you might send an attachment to an email,
  • 00:10 which then goes to all the individual people.
  • 00:12 That works great for getting files around, but
  • 00:14 results in lots of complications that Teams can solve.
  • 00:18 When you're in a team conversation,
  • 00:20 it's simple to attach a file from your PC or from a cloud source,
  • 00:24 as you can simply point to the document and upload it into the conversation.
  • 00:29 And when you do, what happens is that the file is then available for
  • 00:33 everyone to look at.
  • 00:35 People can just simply click on the document and it will open up in either
  • 00:39 PowerPoint, or Word, or whatever the document happens to be.
  • 00:44 And people can also edit it in their desktop app if they choose.
  • 00:48 You can also use @mentions, of course,
  • 00:50 to alert people to an important document being uploaded.
  • 00:53 In addition to adding documents via the team chat, you can post files directly in
  • 00:58 the Files tab by simply dragging and dropping a document from your desktop or
  • 01:04 other source into the Teams Files tab.
  • 01:08 And when you do, the document will automatically be uploaded and
  • 01:11 available for everyone to view.
  • 01:14 All they have to do is click on the document, and once again,
  • 01:17 it will open in Word Online in this case.
  • 01:21 Now some interesting things happen that make it super easy to
  • 01:24 collaborate this way.
  • 01:26 For example, I can now click on the document and
  • 01:30 simply edit it directly in the browser, or I can open it in the desktop app.
  • 01:35 When you're working with the document in the browser, you may notice that there is
  • 01:40 no save button because the documents are automatically saved for you as you edit.
  • 01:46 You can click Save As, to save it as a new file if you care to.
  • 01:50 You can also open your documents in your desktop versions of Office, and
  • 01:54 work with them using the full feature capabilities of the desktop applications.
  • 02:00 You'll notice on the upper left, AutoSave is automatically turned on.
  • 02:04 And when you go to reopen the document once again,
  • 02:07 you can see that the file path is now your Teams share.
  • 02:12 Consequently, you can open and
  • 02:14 edit these documents anytime you have access to the Internet.
  • 02:18 Now if you don't have access to the Internet and you want to work on your
  • 02:21 documents, conveniently, you can synchronize your files to your desktop.
  • 02:27 And then when you are reconnected, they will automatically reappear.
  • 02:31 You do this by simply clicking the Sync option on the File tabs, and
  • 02:36 this will launch a OneDrive installation routine.
  • 02:39 In this system, it's already been done.
  • 02:42 However, you will get a series of prompts installing OneDrive and allow you to
  • 02:47 automatically synchronize your documents in your team library to your PC.
  • 02:52 And in this way, you'll be able to work on your documents offline.
  • 02:57 You can view your documents on your computer by simply looking at the OneDrive
  • 03:02 icon in the Windows 10 system tray.
  • 03:05 And this will bring up the files that are available to you.
  • 03:09 You can open the folder if you wish.
  • 03:11 And notice that the status of the arrows uploading and
  • 03:14 downloading is showing you that stuff is happening.
  • 03:17 We'll double click on this and you can see here that these are in the Cloud,
  • 03:22 and this one is synchronizing currently.
  • 03:24 And this way you can work offline, and when you get back online,
  • 03:28 your document will automatically be uploaded to the Teams files.
  • 03:32 If two or more people edit the same document in different places,
  • 03:35 those changes will be automatically merged.
  • 03:38 If they edit in the same place, you'll see a special resolve feature pop up
  • 03:42 that allows you to reconcile these differences.
  • 03:45 In this way, multiple people can edit the same documents at the same time,
  • 03:49 offline and online, and
  • 03:51 Teams will help to ensure that you have one true copy of your document.
  • 03:55 When you want to share a file with others, you'll need a link to the file.
  • 03:59 Just select the file, click the ellipsis, and click Copy link.
  • 04:04 This will pop open the URL for the file.
  • 04:07 You can click Copy, and then you can paste that into a chat or an email for
  • 04:11 anyone who has access to the file to be able to open.
  • 04:16 In this lesson, we've learned how to share documents in Teams,
  • 04:18 including how to upload files to teams using the Team chat or the Files tab, and
  • 04:23 how you can edit documents in your browser or in Microsoft Office.
  • 04:27 When working with files that are hosted on Teams, your files are saved automatically.
  • 04:33 And you can synchronize your Team files with your desktop,
  • 04:36 allowing you to work offline.
  • 04:39 You can easily share links to documents with other people via email or chat.
  • 04:44 And there's a lot more.
  • 04:45 We'll be talking about co-editing documents,
  • 04:48 which is one of the best features of Teams, in the next lesson.

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