Guides · Document management
The most common misuse of Microsoft 365 is where files get stored. A clear allocation that still holds up two years later.
Microsoft 365 offers three places where files can live, and nowhere does the interface explain which one is meant for what. We see the result in almost every business: business documents in individual employees' personal OneDrive, the same file in three versions in three places, and sharing links that reach further than intended.
The consequences only show later. When someone leaves the company, their cases sit in a personal area nobody can get at. When an audit asks for documents, there are three versions and none of them is the valid one. And when Copilot is introduced, it finds exactly what someone accidentally shared too widely.
The good news: the allocation is simple once you have defined it. It just has to be defined before habits form.
The allocation
A rule that can be explained in one sentence – and that is exactly why people stick to it.
Your own workspace for drafts, notes and things you work on alone. Anything that is finished or concerns other people should be moved out of here.
Files a team is currently working on together, alongside the conversation about them. Every channel automatically has a folder in the associated SharePoint library.
Everything that is permanently valid and exists independently of individual people and projects: contracts, templates, policies, closed cases. Here, permissions are set by department or by case.
The risky part
When you share a file, Microsoft offers several options that differ considerably in their effect – and the default is rarely the most restrictive one.
The blue cloud folder in File Explorer is convenient – and the cause of most of the problems reported to us as “OneDrive is playing up”.
Frequently asked questions
After the account is deleted, the content is retained for a limited period by default and can be accessed by an administrator – after that it is gone. This period can be extended, but you have to think of it before the account is deleted.
The better way is not to let the problem arise in the first place: if business documents are kept in SharePoint, someone leaving only affects drafts.
Not necessarily, and above all not all at once. Large data sets that are accessed constantly, and business applications with their own file storage, are often better kept on premises.
A step-by-step approach makes sense: first move the storage areas people collaborate in, then the archives, and last – if at all – the business applications. Running both side by side is a legitimate state, not a failure.
Three to four levels is a good benchmark. Deeper structures stop being followed because nobody knows where things belong, and they run into technical limits on path length.
What replaces deep structures is search – which works well in SharePoint, provided files are sensibly named. Ten minutes invested in a naming convention saves years of hunting for files.
If everyone is allowed to, within a year you end up with thirty teams with overlapping topics, half of them abandoned. If nobody is allowed to, people find workarounds via email and private chats.
The middle way: creation through one named point of contact, but quick and without red tape. Plus an annual review of which teams are still needed.
Microsoft protects its own infrastructure, not your data against your own mistakes. Once the recycle bin retention periods have expired, a deleted file is gone for good – which is no help with an accidentally deleted folder that is only noticed months later.
Your own backup of mailboxes, OneDrive and SharePoint is therefore not a luxury. When we take over existing environments, we find one far less often than you would expect.
Dipl.-Ing. Mohamed Khater
Dipl.-Ing. Mohamed Khater founded INFONET Computer GmbH in Cologne in 1992. File storage is the area where decisions have the longest-lasting effect – a structure that is set up wrongly once stays with a business for years.
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We look at what is stored in OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint, what is shared externally and where the same documents exist more than once. You receive the results in writing.
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