You can add a SharePoint Document Library to Microsoft Teams for easy access to all your files right from the Teams interface. First, navigate to the Team you’d like the SharePoint library to be accessible from. Click the Plus button from the Tabs Bar and choose Document Library. We don’t want to use the SharePoint tile here because that will only allow us to link to SharePoint pages from the associated Team site. Instead, we want to link to a SharePoint document library from our organization’s shared SharePoint site.
Wait for Teams to find sites from your organization or copy the link to your site directly from your browser. I’m going to choose Marketing because this is the Sales and Marketing Team. Then, click Next. From here, you can choose which document library you’d like to use, the site I’ve picked only has one, but yours might have more. You can only link to one document library per Tab on your Team page. Then click Next again.
Here we can put in a name for the Tab in Teams, and we’ll click Save to add our SharePoint Document library.
You can see that my new tab has popped up here. If I click on it, I see all the files I would see if I navigated to this document library in a browser window. I can click on any folder I want and use the breadcrumbs to return to different levels of my SharePoint hierarchy.
I can add new files and folders here with the New button or use the Upload button to add new files from my computer. Any changes you make here will be reflected directly in SharePoint. I can right click or use the ellipses icon to edit files directly in Teams. Or I can open in the respective Online or Desktop App. For more information about editing and working with files in Teams, see my video, “How to Edit Files Directly in Teams.”
If at any time I feel like I need to be working directly in SharePoint, I can click Open in SharePoint to bring up this page in SharePoint from a browser window.
If I want to share the link to a file, like I would in SharePoint, I can select a document to share a link directly to that document or select nothing to share a link to that folder. I want a link to this folder, so I’m not going to select anything and choose the Get Link option from the toolbar here.
From here, I can get a Teams Link, which is a link to the file where it lives in this Marketing SharePoint tab of my Sales and Marketing Team, or I can share the link to it directly on SharePoint.
That’s how you add a document library for easy access to your files in Microsoft Teams.
Thank you! That saved me from chasing my tail. It is not intuitive to pick “Document Library” instead of SharePoint.
Thanks for reading, Matthew! We’re glad this helped you out!
Is it possible to attach a file from one of these document libraries to a planner task (using the sharepoint section of planner attachments)?
Hi JC96,
You will not be able to use the “SharePoint” option to attach a file from a SharePoint site separate from your team to a Planner task–even if you’ve added it as a tab; you can use the link option to do this instead. Go to your new document library tab, select a file, and then click “Get Link” from the options menu at the top. Then, copy that link and paste it into the “Link” option from the task in Planner to attach your file.
Let us know if you have any other questions, and thanks for reading!
Hi, what happens if you delete the tab, will it delete the original files in shared point? Thanks
Hi CZ, thanks for reading!
None of your files will be deleted if you delete the tab. The tab will just be removed from your Team, and all of your files will still be accessible via SharePoint.
Hi there! I wonder if this only works with https…
Hi Reinaldo,
Thanks for reading! I am guessing you’re referring to adding SharePoint using a website tab. This does only work with an https URL, but all of your SharePoint sites should support https already. You should be able to add your SharePoint site using this method pretty easily. Let me know if this answers your question!
can you do this as an Office 365 admin. In teams admin portal. Configure it so that all the staff has access it to it without having to visit each user?
I have an existing SharePoint Document Library but its cumbersome for the staff to access it thru the web browser.
Hi Mike, good question. Let me clarify for you. When you add a tab to a Team, that tab doesn’t just appear for you–it appears for every member of that team. This is true of any tabs that you add, not just the SharePoint ones. So you don’t need to visit each user or use the admin console. Just add the tab to your Team(s) and everyone in the Team will have access automatically.
Hi Stephanie – thanks so much for this. Is it possible to restrict team members from modifying the files in the document library, or from adding or deleting files??
Hi KS,
Thanks for reading. This has more to do with your SharePoint site vs. settings in Teams. You should edit the permissions for your SharePoint site to restrict users to be “View Only.” I do have reservations that this may not translate properly to Teams. Microsoft may assume that by adding the library to the Team, you want to share extra permissions with Team members. When you’re working with permissions across platforms, things can get a little fuzzy and we’d recommend some troubleshooting to verify the expected behavior. If you find out, please come back and let us know!
Is it possible to go the other direction? That is, display a team channel or tab on the Sharepoint intranet?
Hi Dan,
Unfortunately, this is not possible in the other direction. The functionality you’re looking for might be better accomplished by using a SharePoint Hub site.
Hi, thank you fore your post. Is it then possible to use the SharePoint Library as the Files repository of the Team ? I mean, when you will send a file through the channel of the Team, could this files be automatically loaded on this SharePoint Library, and not the default one’s, attached to the SharePoint website of the Team. I hope my question is clear enough… Thank you!
Hi Victor. We get this question a lot. It sound’s like you’re asking if you can make the “files” tab in a team connect directly to an existing SharePoint so that when people upload files to a team, those all end up in your existing SharePoint site instead of the new and separate SharePoint site that’s built on the back end for that team. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible at the time I’m writing this.
Hi Stephanie, you got it all figured out. It’s a shame not to be able to centralize our data, especially after archiving the teams… I hope Microsoft is working on this topic! But thank you very much for your answer!
Hi There – I want to manage via separate libraries instead of separate folders for my channels. Sounds like I can, but I still get the “Files” tab and it still goes to a folder in the default library. If i understand correctly, my only option is to explain to users which document area to use, and I can’t hide the out-of-the-box “Files” tab.
Hi Kelli, You can create separate libraries for your channels, but those won’t be connected to Teams. They’ll be completely separate sites that you have to build yourself. I’m not sure there are benefits to doing this. You can add them as tabs, but you cannot get rid of the Files tab. You’re correct that you’ll need to let your users know where to upload files. This means they cannot upload them to the posts tab or to a meeting, because the files will go to the wrong place. Sorry I can’t be more helpful!
Hi, can we view the library setting from Sharepoint in Teams? When I’m saving a certain library view in Teams, this is only showed in Sharepoint and keeps on disappearing in my Teams library settings.
For example, I choose to view my documents, grouped on “Topics” in Teams, I save the view and confirm this should be my default view.
If I go to sharepoint, the default view is indeed grouped by Topic. When I go back to Teams, the view is no longer grouped by Topic.
It should be possible as It works as such in another Teams Site, I can however not figure out how I managed to do it….
HI Coralie, are you talking about a tab you’ve added or the Files tab in a Team? I’m not sure what you mean by “Group by ‘Topics'”
Thank you for this write up, I have been tasked with adding our document libraries from sharepoint into teams. my issue is I get the following error when I try this. This link is not supported here. Please paste a link to an existing SharePoint page or list.
Hi Katrina, are you clicking “Document Library” or “SharePoint” from the apps list? This can happen if you’d tried to use SharePoint instead of the Document Library Option. Additionally, make sure you’re copying the direct link to your SharePoint site.
I have the same issue as Katrina. I’m getting error “this sharepoint link is not supported. please paste a different sharepoint link” when I select SharePoint tile and add direct link to one of my SharePoint sites. Example: https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/abc. I also tried https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/abc/sitepages/home.aspx
Hi Ruth, this is a quick fix. Please refer to the instructions in this video to fix this problem. You need to select the “Document Library” tile, not the SharePoint tile. Let me know if you’re still having problems after you try that!
Hi Stephanie, I’m also getting this problem. I have tried it with the Document Library tile and the SharePoint tile.
also when I try it through “Relevant Sites” I only get 4 of the many sites I have access to, and the one I need is not one of them.
Hi Kevin, I have only seen this behavior when the link is copied incorrectly. If you’re sure you’ve copied the correct link to a site in the same Office 365 tenant, than this problem might better be taken to your Office 365 admin. They may check into some of the permissions set up for this site on the back end and see if they can figure it out through there. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful! Without seeing your exact situation, I can’t diagnose an issue.
Hi. I managed to use the File tab to connect to my pre-existing sharepoint site. It shows up as a folder.
But I don’t want it there – i want the tab with Sharepoint-library instead.
Under the File-tab, can I delete the folder which bears the name of my sharepoint-library without anyting other than the link being deleted?
Hi Elisabeth, yes you can delete the connection without deleting anything from SharePoint. Only the link will be deleted!
Thanks for the video. Is there any way to add a specific sharepoint folder instead of an entire library? I would like to only share relevant folders with the team since it includes people outside of my business unit who don’t need access to the entire library.
Thanks.
Hi Joseph, unfortunately, this feature only allows you to add complete document libraries. Our best practice for this is to separate business files into separate document libraries so that all company data isn’t stored in one library that can get a bit unwieldy and unorganized. If you have an external guest in your team, the best practice for security’s sake would be to not link external storage and store the necessary files directly in Teams. This will help you control who has access to company data.
I added the SP using the SP app instead of the ‘website’ option and there was no difference. Does it matter which I choose?
Hi Mako. Best practice would be to integrate directly using the SharePoint or Document Library tiles instead of using the website options which offers limited “in Teams” functionality. That’s really only for accessing other SharePoint features vs. just working with file.
In my document library, I have added additional columns, for metadata. When I add this document library to my Team, as a tab, following your instructions, I do get the document library.
However, it doesn’t bring in the metadata columns.
How do I get the meta tags to show in Teams?
Hi Susan, great question! This feature is currently supported in Teams only for the Files tab and doesn’t yet work when you add a separate SharePoint tab. However, you can use the “add cloud storage” button on the Files tab to add your SharePoint site and then when users click through, they’ll be able to view the metadata columns through that method. Let me know if you have any questions!
I have added a document library as a tab but am seeing inconsistent behaviour for different users. Everyone should have edit rights to this document library but I have one user who is reporting that they aren’t able to download files from this library in Teams, though they are able to if they go to the same library on Sharepoint. Any ideas???
Hi Christina, can you check that their permissions for the channel where this Team lives is correct? Are they guests who have restricted access in Teams? Our guess is that the permissions in Teams are overriding the SharePoint permissions.
Hi. I have added the document library tab to my teams but it is not using the default view we have set on the library, it is showing all folders. Do you know if this is what was intended or if this is something we can change?
Hi Melissa, customized views are only supported on the Files tab in a Team, not in a SharePoint tab. The way to get around this is to click the “add cloud storage” button on the Files tab and adding your SharePoint storage there instead of adding it as a tab. Let me know if this answers your question!
This answer actually helped me, but one detail we wanted was not yet achieved.
We have a MS Teams which has different channels and what we wanted to display as a tab (as an ‘Add Cloud Storage’ option) is just the directory of one channel, not all the documents for the whole MS Team. Is this something that can be achieved?
Hi Nina, unfortunately not at this point. The “Add Cloud Storage” option just allows you to add a complete library, not a subsection or specific folder.
I do believe you can add the web part to a page on your sharepoint site, then add the page to your teams site. It comes in with the views set in the page.
Hi Morgan, you’re absolutely right! This is a good workaround.
Hi, does adding a Document Library also add extra storage or do you have to add sharepoint site for this?
Hi Nora, I’m not sure I completely understand your question, so let me know if I don’t get it right. When you add a document library to a Team, you’re not adding any additional storage capacity. You must use an existing SharePoint library, and you’re limited to the amount of storage already in that library. Any file you store in Teams (whether on the files tab or in an added library is actually stored in SharePoint and your SharePoint storage capacity is determined by your Office 365 licensing level. In essence, it’s all taking from the same bucket. Teams just gives you a convenient place to access this bucket.