Sharing files in Microsoft Teams between teams in 2024 – how to?

One of the core features of Microsoft Teams, as a collaboration hub, is the file-sharing function. In this blog post we’re going to cover a few situations when file-sharing takes place, and show you how to handle them correctly.

How to share files between Microsoft Teams members?

Within each Team, there are one or more channels. For each channel, a new folder is created in the SharePoint library. All the content related to the channel is stored in SharePoint, allowing the Microsoft Teams members to work from SharePoint as well. Check our recent Microsoft Teams vs SharePoint blog to see an in-depth relation between those tools.

To access the files from the folder, you can click the “Files” tab above the conversation window. You can add an existing file to your library, or create new files. Files stored in the team’s file library are available to every team member.

You can choose whether you want collaborators to edit the document inside a Team editor, in a Desktop App, in a browser, or download it for later use.

Microsoft 365 apps allow real-time collaboration between Microsoft Teams members. That means that they can co-edit Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents, with their changes being synced and merged as they work. If you’re working remotely, this feature can come in quite handy. Check out how Syskit Point can help you if you’re working remotely via Microsoft Teams.

How to share files with people outside your team?

Now and then, you might want to share a file with somebody outside your team. For example, a member of the Marketing Team might want to show advertising receipts to a member of the Finance Team.

It can be done with a simple click. Any team member can open the file on the Office desktop or in the Office Online app and click the Share button. After doing that, you can enter the receivers’ email addresses or send them a link.

If you want to share a file with a broader range of people from your company, you can select the option – People in your organization with this link can edit.

How to share files with members of multiple Microsoft Teams?

What if you want to share a file with another team, or a couple of them? Let’s say you want to share Legal Documents 2019 files with teams Finance and Team Leads. You wouldn’t want to have to list all those team members in a sharing dialog – it would take too long. You might not even know all of them. So what should you do?

The best thing you can do is this:

1. Go to the SharePoint site collection of your team and click New>Document Library

2. Give it a name, description, and choose whether to show it in site navigation

3. Add permissions to the members of the other team with which you want to share the document library

Pro Tip: Grant permissions to the document library to multiple teams at once with Syskit Point! Check out the detailed guide:

1. Find the created document library Legal Documents 2019 in the sites report details.

2. Grant access by adding security groups related to teams Finance and Team Leads.

3. Click the + button in the tabs menu in your team channel.

4.  Add the library by copying the library URL.

This way you will have one document library to which all the different Team members have access.

Simply upload file/s here, without wasting much time setting up sharing for every file with each individual member. To stop sharing files, you can click on the three dots and then click Manage access:

You can now click Stop sharing and also manage sharing access to existing links:

How to share Microsoft Teams files with guest users?

Besides the above-mentioned situations, it can happen that a Team member wants to share files with people outside the company (guests). For example, the Finance Team has to send some documents to the company’s accounting firm.

The first step is to enable external sharing for Microsoft Teams. A global Microsoft 365 admin can do that on four levels: in the AAD, in the SharePoint Online settings, in Microsoft 365 Groups, and in your Teams settings.

Once external sharing is enabled and the global admin has allowed Team members to share with guests, that Finance Team member can share files with guests through the Microsoft Teams app. When you complete all these steps, your guests can edit files in the same way as the members of the Team.

Of course, you may need to control sharing among guests. Maybe for governance, security, or simply to stop content sprawl. Here’s how.

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center, click Policies and click Sharing:

2. You can now set extra controls. These include expiration policies, default permissions, limit external sharing, and reauthentication requirements:

Learn more about external sharing in SharePoint Online in the guide from our CEO.

Syskit Point – Your Microsoft 365 security ally

Control the number of Teams – list ALL Microsoft Teams, their members, owners, and guest users. Find the associated site collections and Microsoft 365 Groups with a single click.

Manage Microsoft Teams with ease – add members in bulk, copy Teams, and manage their settings.

Control guest access – find all the Teams guest users in a single report and keep your management in the loop.