What it is

SharePoint is the part of Microsoft 365 most people use daily without realising it. Every time you open a file from Teams, save a document for your team, or visit your intranet, you’re using SharePoint underneath. It’s the platform Microsoft built to store, organise, and share content at the team and organisation level — and it’s the foundation for almost everything Microsoft 365 does with documents and team content.

The simplest way to think about SharePoint is this: OneDrive is for you. SharePoint is for your team. When you need a place where files, information, and processes live for a group of people — a department, a project team, or the whole organisation — that place is a SharePoint site. Each site has document libraries (where files live), pages (where information lives), and lists (where structured data lives).

In 2026, SharePoint also has a new navigation layer: the App Bar with four hubs (Discover, Publish, Build, OneDrive). And it has AI in SharePoint — agentic capabilities that auto-apply metadata to your content and can build whole sites from a natural-language prompt. This is the most significant change to SharePoint in years, and most teams haven’t fully internalised what it means yet.

Why it matters

SharePoint isn’t just a file store. It’s the platform that holds your team’s information together — and the platform Copilot reads from when it answers questions about your work.

• It’s structured. Files can be tagged with metadata (department, document type, status, owner) so they’re found by attribute, not just by location. This is why SharePoint scales when shared drives don’t.
• It’s connected. Every Microsoft Team has a SharePoint site behind it. Every channel has a folder in that site. Every shared file in Teams chat ends up here.
• It’s where AI works. Copilot reads SharePoint content when answering questions. AI in SharePoint auto-tags content using your metadata structure. A clean SharePoint makes AI useful; a messy SharePoint makes AI surface the mess faster.

When to use this

• When you need a place where files, information, or processes live for a team — not just for you.
• When the content needs to outlive any one person’s role.
• When you need structure: metadata, permissions, retention, search.
• When you’re getting ready for Copilot — SharePoint is what Copilot reads.

How to do it

1. Open SharePoint from the App Launcher (waffle) or from microsoft365.com.
2. The SharePoint home shows you sites you follow, recent activity, and suggested sites. The App Bar (left side) gives you Discover, Publish, Build, OneDrive.
3. Use Discover to see what your team is working on. This is your default SharePoint view in 2026.
4. Open a site by clicking it. Each site has a navigation menu, document libraries, pages, and lists.
5. Inside a library, see your files. Use the command bar at the top to upload, share, sync, or open in Copilot.
6. Use views to filter and sort files. The ‘All Documents’ view is a starting point, not a destination — build views that match your team’s actual workflow.
7. To create new content, use + New in any library or list, or use the Build hub to create a new site.

Best practices

• Treat SharePoint as the team-level storage and information layer. OneDrive is for you; SharePoint is for everyone else.
• Start your SharePoint day in Discover (App Bar). It surfaces what your team is working on now.
• Use metadata, not folder depth. A library with the right columns scales; a library with 8 folder levels doesn’t.
• If you’re getting ready for Copilot, fix the SharePoint structure first. Permissions, metadata, sensitive content. AI amplifies what’s there.

Common mistakes

• Treating SharePoint like a shared drive. Same files, same chaos.
• Ignoring the App Bar. The new Discover hub is the most useful change to SharePoint in years.
• Building 12-level folder hierarchies. They never scale, and they break search.
• Turning on Copilot before fixing SharePoint structure. The mess gets exposed faster.

FAQ