Microsoft offers various solutions within Office 365 to share files and documents with colleagues, external contacts, friends and business associates.

I worked out the 8 most common scenarios in this article. If you know of any other scenarios, be sure to leave a comment at the bottom of this article.

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1. Sharing personal files via Microsoft Teams

Sharing a file in Teams: Via Microsoft Teams you can select files – copy the link and forward the URL to internal colleagues or external contacts. For this you do not need to allow external sharing from the team site itself.

This url can contain a OneDrive or Microsoft Teams . One regret is that it is not possible to share a URL from Microsoft Teams if the user is not a member of the Team.

2. Sharing personal files via OneDrive with internal and external contacts

You can start via Microsoft Teams or via the portal you see in the second screenshot. https://portal.office.com

Press open in OneDrive.

Press Share

Send link.

3. Sharing personal files via e-mail to external users

You can share personal documents from your own OneDrive via https://portal.office.comThen click on OneDrive, select your file and click Share.

Example: how to share an Excel file in office 365 with external people.

Example: Sharing a Word, PowerPoint or OneNote file with colleagues.

4. Microsoft Teams sharing files with internal and external users

Below you can find 4 scenarios for collaborating with external users. If you work well with external collaborators, you keep your documents on the organisation’s side, and add guests who can consult or edit them.

1. Direct chat
2. Share a full Microsoft Teams
3. Set up a meeting with external users
4. Meeting with non-Microsoft Teams users

5. Send attachment by e-mail

It is still perfectly possible to send files as attachments by e-mail. It is much easier not to do this and to share the link. That way, the document or ‘the right version’ remains in your own hands and everyone can contribute to it.

Select Attach as Copy

6. Sharing a file directly via Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint

Sharing Excel, Word or PowerPoint (or other) files is very easy within Office 365. Below I explain how you can get started.

Click on Share at the top

Select the specific access you wish to give.

7. Inviting people from outside the organisation to Microsoft Teams

Adding guests to Teams is easy. If you as a team owner have the permission to do so, you can add participants to the entire team. This way you don’t have to share separate documents but can share a folder or an entire team.

Navigate to the team you want to add a guest to. Add the user based on their e-mail address.

You may get a message to confirm that you allow the addition of third parties or externals. You may accept this.

Press Add Member.

Enter your external contact in this wizard and press Add.

The recipient will see an icon of the teams to which they have access in their Microsoft teams .

Adding 700 people in 30 seconds is also possible. How, you can read here.

8. Inviting guests in SharePoint

In Office 365 groups or Microsoft Teams or directly SharePoint you can add guests or colleagues.

Navigate to the document library within SharePoint, select the document you wish to share -> press share -> select the recipient and press send.