SharePoint vs OneDrive vs Teams: Where Should Files Live?

The short answer

• OneDrive: files that belong to you. Drafts, personal notes, work nobody else needs yet.
• Teams: files your team works on together. They sit next to the conversation about them.
• SharePoint: files the organisation publishes or keeps, such as policies, templates, procedures and records, plus anything that needs structure.

A quick test: if you left tomorrow, would the team need this file? If yes, it shouldn't be in your OneDrive.

Teams files are SharePoint files

Every team in Microsoft Teams has a SharePoint team site behind it. Each standard channel gets a folder in that site's document library. When you upload a file in a Teams channel, it's stored in SharePoint.

Files shared in one-to-one or group chats are different: they're stored in the sender's OneDrive and shared with the people in the chat. That's why files 'disappear' when someone leaves. Share important files in a channel, not a chat.

When to go straight to SharePoint

• Many people need to read the file, but only a few should edit it (policies, HR documents, templates).
• You need metadata, views, approvals or retention rules.
• The content is a list or register, such as contracts, assets or requests.
• You're building an intranet page that people browse rather than a chat they join.

A setup that works for most small teams

1. One Team per department or long-running project for day-to-day collaboration.
2. A SharePoint intranet, with communication sites for company-wide information.
3. OneDrive for personal drafts only, and a habit of moving finished work to the team.
4. Sync the libraries people use daily to File Explorer with the OneDrive app, so it still feels like a shared drive.