Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 Learning
Microsoft 365 is Microsoft’s bundle of mail, files, chat, and related apps that many workplaces already pay for. This guide shows how those pieces are meant to fit, how to share without oversharing, and which habits cause the most damage.
What you are looking at
Outlook (or the mail app in the browser) is the mailbox. Teams is chat, meetings, and sometimes files attached to a team. OneDrive is your personal work library inside the company tenant. SharePoint is the library for a group or the whole organisation. They look like four products. They are four doors into the same tenant.
Microsoft publishes Microsoft 365 and writes the official documentation. This website is not Microsoft, does not sell licences, and is not a Microsoft partner or official support channel. When a setting in your tenant disagrees with this page, follow your tenant and Microsoft’s own help.
Guide: where a file should live
If only you should edit it for now, put it in OneDrive, in a folder you will later move. If a team must keep it after you are away, put it in the SharePoint library or the Teams files tab for that team. If it is a company template everyone reuses, it belongs in a library with a clear name, not in your mailbox.
- Open office.com in a browser and sign in with your work account. Confirm the name in the corner is the work name, not a personal Outlook.com account.
- Open OneDrive. Create folders: Drafts, Projects, Archive. Put working copies in Drafts.
- Open the SharePoint site or Team your office already uses. Note the library name. That is the official shelf.
- Upload one real document to the official shelf. Share it with a colleague using their name, not with “anyone with the link”, unless policy says public links are allowed.
- Delete the extra copy on your desktop after you confirm the online file opens.
People still email attachments. Reply with the link to the library copy when you can. Two copies diverge within a day.
Sharing links without giving away the company
Microsoft 365 sharing labels are easy to misread. “Anyone” is the whole internet for as long as the link lives. “People in your organisation” is everyone with a company login, including people you did not have in mind. “Specific people” is the narrow door.
- When you click Share, read the permission line before you send. Change “Anyone” to specific people for quotes, contracts, and HR files.
- Prefer view rather than edit for people who only need to read.
- Set an expiry on links that go outside the company if your tenant offers it.
- Stop sharing when a project ends. A link from last year is still a door.
- Never paste a sharing link into a public social post unless the document is meant to be public.
Mail, Teams, and the same conversation in three places
A decision that lives in a Teams chat, an email, and a document will be remembered differently by each person. Pick a home for decisions: the document, with a short mail that points to it. Use Teams for quick coordination. Use mail when you need a record that someone outside the Team must see.
Search is not a filing system. If you cannot find a decision without typing three keywords, file it. The workplace guides on naming files apply here: workplace technology guides.
MFA, admin roles, and leavers
Turn on multi-factor authentication for the work account. If you are the person who was given an admin role “temporarily”, treat that as a standing risk until it is removed. Admin roles can reset other people’s mail and sharing.
When someone leaves, their mailbox and OneDrive still hold company files. The work is: block sign-in, convert the mailbox if mail must be read, move OneDrive files to the team library, then remove licences according to whatever process your office already has. If you are not the person allowed to do that, write the request with the person’s last day and which libraries they owned.
Common mistakes
Signing in to a work tenant with a personal Microsoft account in another browser tab and uploading to the wrong OneDrive. Sharing a whole site when you meant one file. Using Teams chat as the only copy of a contract. Turning off MFA because a trip had poor signal — use backup methods Microsoft documents, not an off switch.
Another mistake is assuming deleted mail is gone forever or, the opposite, that it is kept forever. Retention is a setting. Ask what your tenant keeps before you rely on it as an archive. Independent copies are covered in data backup education.
Microsoft 365 checklist
- You can sign in at office.com with the work account and see mail and files.
- You know whether a given document belongs in OneDrive or in a team library.
- You have shared one file with a named person, not with “anyone”.
- MFA is on for your work account.
- You know who in the office can add and remove users, even if that person is not you.
- You have not treated this page as official Microsoft support.
Questions people ask
We still say Office 365. Is that different?
The product family in market is Microsoft 365. Older tenants and invoices may still say Office 365. The habits on this page still apply: one tenant, files in libraries, careful sharing.
Do you sell licences or reset our tenant?
No. Microsoft and the company’s existing seller handle licences. This site does not administer tenants.
Cloud is a bigger word than Microsoft 365
The next guide explains SaaS, accounts you do not see, and when a “move to the cloud” is actually a project.