Microsoft 365 allows the Ohio State community to collaborate through one cloud platform delivering a wide range of productivity apps. Access email, store and share files, communicate with your coworkers or students, schedule meetings, track your to-do lists and more by integrating applications and downloading them on up to five devices. OneDrive comes with Office Online, so you can create, edit, and share your work regardless of the type of device you or your group is working on. Visit the links below to download Office 365.

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Office 365 Work Sign In
Office 365 Login

Microsoft is pushing Teams- part of Office 365 – hard, and they report adoption rates that outpace Slack. You might not realize that Teams lives on top of SharePoint Online, and you could exacerbate an already complicated and risky SharePoint file sharing problem unless you take preventative measures.

However, Office 365 has many great collaboration features, and in a fast-paced digital workplace, collaboration is key. You can share and work on documents with your co-workers simultaneously. You can request feedback and publish links so others can access your content and more collaborative functionality. Since SharePoint Online is part of Office 365, the system is integrated into Azure AD, Exchange Online, and OneDrive.

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'I was kind of shocked how open the sharing with Teams can be, one mis-click and your data is accessible to anyone on the Internet.'

But all that sharing, and collaboration comes at a price – users might not even realize what they are sharing with whom.

Over time, Office 365 can become a mess of public-facing links, unfettered access to sensitive data, and a permissions nightmare in desperate need of wrangling.

In this article, we are going to address some specific security issues with SharePoint Online, and discuss some best practices you can implement to manage Office 365 file sharing more effectively.

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File Sharing Tools Included in Office 365

The two file sharing systems in Office 365 are SharePoint Online and OneDrive, and they work in concert with each other to provide the total file sharing functionality of the system.

If you want to think of OneDrive as the backend storage and SharePoint as the frontend interface, you wouldn’t be too far off. That is a good enough way to imagine how the system works.

For example, if you send a sharing link from your OneDrive folder, the URL is a link to SharePoint Online.

Not confusing at all, am I right? Let’s look at the major functionality of each of these systems and see what’s included in OneDrive and what’s included in SharePoint.

Office 365 File Sharing Basics

Here are some of the basic workflows you will follow to access and share files in SharePoint Online and OneDrive.

How to Find Files

You might have OneDrive available as an option in Windows Explorer where you can see the sync status, modified date, and use the Find field to locate your files.

You can also use the OneDrive website to see the same information.

And you can see the same folder in Teams.

How to Co-author Files

To co-author a file you need to have permissions to edit the file. You can have permissions through group membership, or the data owner could send you a link to edit the file.

You can share files with one or more users, with anyone with the link, or you could save the file to a folder that your team can access.

Once you can co-author the file, you need to open the file online in a browser or the client on your computer (i.e., Word Online or Word).

Updating and Syncing Files

Updating and syncing files is usually straightforward in Office 365. When you save a file that you are working on, it will sync to the server and tell you if there are changes you don’t have in your copy. If you save a file to your local OneDrive folder on your laptop the files will get uploaded and synced behind the scenes, assuming you have an internet connection.

It’s best practice to make sure you have the most recent changes before you start editing again. I’ve made that mistake on more than one occasion. One way to avoid that problem is to use Word Online when you are editing. If you use the local copy of the file in Word, you aren’t looking at the file “live.”

How to Share Files on Office 365

This section covers what you need to know about file sharing as well as some extra Office 365 file sharing tips.

Internal File Sharing

Internal file sharing is when you share files within the network to other users that are in the same Azure Active Directory (AD) domain with you with non-guest permissions. In Office 365, you can share files from your personal OneDrive or save them to your SharePoint Team Site.

Configuring Internal Sharing

SharePoint automatically creates a Team Site when you create a group in the Office 365 Admin Center. Use this Team Site to save documents for collaboration within your team. Office 365 creates a OneDrive folder for each user account that users should use for personal files that don’t require collaboration.

How to Share Files Internally

All you need to do to share files internally is save them to your SharePoint Teams folder. You can access this folder from the SharePoint website or in your Teams client.

You can also send users a link to the file you want to share.

Select the option to share with Specific People, People in your organization, or People with existing access. Use the first to specify one or few people, the second to allow anyone in your entire company, and the last to anyone who already has access to the file – like your team.
Click the button to allow editing if needed.
Allow or block download. You might use block download on a sensitive file to make sure there aren’t extra copies of that file floating around.
Type the name of the person(s) you want to be able to see the file.
Click “Copy Link”
Send the link

External File Sharing

External file sharing in Office 365 is when you need to send a file outside of your organization to a person that is not part of your company. External sharing is riskier because you are opening a window to your SharePoint server or potentially sending sensitive data outside of your network.

There are numerous legitimate business reasons to allow external file sharing. Users need to work with partners or customers. Your finance team needs to send documentation to governing bodies. HR needs to send offer letters. You get the idea. You have to be able to share files.

There are several ways to configure external sharing in Office 365. Let’s look at a few options.

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Configuring External Sharing

Administrators can enable external sharing from four different applications in Office 365.

SharePoint Online
OneDrive for Business
Microsoft Teams
Office 365 Groups

One option you have is to enable guest access, and grant external users guest access rights so they can collaborate with your internal resources the same way they would collaborate within their team.

Guests are actual users in your Azure AD. Group owners are the gatekeepers in this case. Group owners can grant guests access to Teams conversations, to SharePoint sites, or data.

SharePoint administrators have four different options of sharing they can enable: Video surveillance software projects downloads.

No external sharing – prevents internal users from sharing any content externally
Authenticated: Existing guests – allows sharing with users in your Azure AD, you have to add them to Azure AD before they can access data
Authenticated: New and existing guests – allows sharing with any user authenticated to any Office