Sometimes people need to move or copy many files at once from their OneDrive to a shared folder or location. This is sometimes simply for reorganizing and sharing content more efficiently. Other times, it’s because a user learns that OneDrive is tied to individual employees so when they leave, their OneDrive will be gone as well. What files do you currently have in your OneDrive that others would need if you left the company?
Does your team use Microsoft Teams regularly? Every team in Microsoft Teams has a SharePoint site that supports it – so moving files to a site connected to a team makes those files more easily accessible via Teams as well.
If you need to perform a bulk move like this, you can individually select what you want to move or select all files in your OneDrive for Business and move or copy them to a shared location, such as your team’s SharePoint site. The steps are listed below, or a video demonstration is available at the bottom of the post.
How to move all your files from OneDrive to SharePoint
Multi-select the files you intend to move or copy, or “select all”
Select Move to (or Copy to if you wish to keep a version of your own)
Select all files | Move to actions (click to enlarge)
Find the site/team under Quick Access to which you’re moving files (you may need to click More places…)
You can create a new folder (as seen in video at bottom of post) if there’s not a great existing option for keeping them organized
Each site/team may have multiple libraries – use the library switcher next to the site name at the top to choose a different library
Document library switcher when moving or copying files (click to enlarge)
Select Move here and wait for the move to complete before closing your browser
In this video, I’ll show you how to move all OneDrive for Business files to a document library on a team-connected SharePoint site.
You can open files directly within Teams to have a single context in which you’re able to do your work. However, when dealing with complex files you may wish to change how files are opened to be able to utilize the full functionality of the desktop app instead.
Note: You must use the desktop version of Teams to enable this feature (doesn’t apply to web version). If you’re still not seeing it, make sure you have updated to the latest version of Teams.
If you don’t make any changes to your default settings in Teams, documents will open in Teams automatically. Here are the three Teams file experience options you have:
Teams (default) – uses the Office web app, just like browser, but with Teams as a wrapper (see following screenshot)
App (desktop or client application) – opens outside of Teams and browsers in the fully-featured application (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint)
Browser – opens outside of Teams in the Office web app but in your internet browser
A Word file opened inside Teams (web app experience)
And, of course, you can always open a file in Teams then choose Open in Desktop App at the top, but that’s the long way around. We can choose where to open a file before we even open it.
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In this post, I’ll cover how to open a file in a different context (Teams, desktop app, or browser) for one-time needs as well as changing your default setting to force all files to open in the desktop version if you wish.
How to open a file from Teams in the desktop/client app without changing default settings
If you right-click a file in Teams and hover over Open, you’ll see you can choose to open that one file using the default or your preferred experience (Teams, app/desktop, or browser). This is great for those one-off files that require the full desktop application.
So if you need to open a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file outside Teams, using its full desktop app:
Right-click the file
Select Open
Select Open in app
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Or if you already have the file opened in Teams, just click Open in Desktop App at the top.
How to change default file opening behavior of Teams to always open in desktop app
If you’d rather change the default setting for yourself so that a single left-click opens in the desktop app always, there are two places you can change your file opening preference – a file’s open menu or your Teams settings.
Note: Desktop/app will only be available as an option if you have Office version 16 or newer.
Always open Teams files in the desktop app | Method #1 (from a file)
To change your default file opening preference from an individual file’s menu, right-click the file, select Open, then select Change default.
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Then choose Desktop app and Save. Now Teams will always open Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files in the appropriate desktop application.
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Always open Teams files in the desktop app | Method #2 (in your Settings)
Alternatively, you don’t need to find a file first. Simply use the ellipsis (three dots) in the upper right corner of Teams and choose Settings.
Then select Files from the left and choose Desktop app from the dropdown menu. You change is saved automatically.
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Always open Teams files in the Desktop app | Bonus method (prompt after opening one-time in desktop)
There is one more way to change this setting, but it’s less straightforward so I’m deeming it a “bonus method.” 🙂
If you do choose to right-click > Open > Open in app one time for a file, when you return to Teams it will prompt you to let it know if you were just opening in the desktop app this one time, or if you would like to go ahead and change your setting to always open Teams files in the desktop app.
Click to enlarge – Prompt shown when returning to Teams after having opened a file in the Desktop app from its Open menu
Microsoft Teams is the place where groups of people come together to communicate and collaborate. A large part of that collaboration is document storage, sharing, and co-authoring. In Teams, files can be found on the Files tab of each channel within a team.
Did you know the Files tab is actually showing you the contents of a SharePoint folder associated with that channel?
Because Teams files are stored in SharePoint, any file deleted from a Teams channel goes to the associated SharePoint site’s Recycle Bin. We need to go to that Recycle Bin to restore the deleted file from there.
Click to enlarge | The dialog that appears when deleting a Teams file shows us it’ll go to the (SharePoint) site Recycle Bin.
How to restore a deleted Teams file
To find the correct SharePoint site for the team in question, we first open the Files tab for the channel from which you originally deleted the file. Then choose Open in SharePoint. If you don’t see it, you may need to use the ellipsis (…) then select it as seen in the following screenshot.
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Next choose Recycle Bin from the left-hand navigation menu.
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Finally, select the file you deleted then choose Restore from the ribbon menu.
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Idea: Add the Recycle Bin as a channel tab
If you’re part of a team that is frequently accessing the Recycle Bin, you can pin it as a tab in your channel(s). Start this by clicking the plus sign (+) to the right of your existing tabs.
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Choose Website for the app (SharePoint apps won’t work for this particular idea).
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Name the tab Recycle Bin, paste the URL to your site’s Recycle Bin, and click Save.
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Now you can drag the new Recycle Bin tab right next to your Files tab and have them side-by-side.
