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Writer's pictureAmanda Sterner

Three places where I find my files in Office 365

Updated: May 2, 2022

Ok – lets be honest, sometimes it can be hard to find the files you are working on in Office 365 (even if you have been using all my tips for searching 😉). In this blog post I will show you some different places where I usually look for my files.


Some of these places are more obvious and some I’ve noticed that fewer people are aware of. I hope the tips will help you save time for working instead of looking for files.


1 – Through the desktop app

Let’s start somewhere at least I spend a lot of my time every day – In Word, PowerPoint or Excel.

Finding files in the desktopp app

When opening a new file, you will have the option to create a file from different templates and you will also see the recent files you’ve been working with. Here you will see all the recent files you opened in the desktop app, regardless where you opened them from meaning files from your OneDrive (both private and O365), SharePoint sites, teams in Microsoft Teams (yes I know this is SharePoint as well) or locally.


Under the file title you will see where the file is located, so you know where to go if you’re looking for more similar files. Only tricky part is when you juggle several accounts (classic consultant life you know), as the name of the tenant doesn’t show. But I guess normal people should only have one tenant and not 3+ haha.


Next to recent you have Pinned and Shared with Me.


To pin a file, you hold your mouse over the file, to the right a pin will appear. Click it.

Seeing the file location

Under shared with me you will see files people shared with you that you opened in the desktop app.


Another quick way to find your recent files is to right click the icon of the desktop app, there you will also se your recent files.

Rightclick on the desktop app

2 – Files in Microsoft Teams

Another way to find your recent files you’ve been working with is to look under Files in the left side navigation in the Microsoft Teams desktop app.

Files in Microsoft Teams

Under Recent you will see the recent files you’ve opened as long as it’s the same tenant. This means even if you open a file directly from e.g. Word (that’s saved in either SharePoint or OneDrive) it will show under recent here. Under location it says where the file is saved.


Under the other views; Microsoft Teams you can see all files you’ve opened that’s saved in a team in Microsoft Teams and Downloads will link to all downloads you’ve finished on the current computer.


Under Cloud storage you will find your OneDrive and all of its content. If your admin approves it you can add more cloud storages than OneDrive, this means if your organization works with Dropbox, Box, ShareFile or Google Drive as well as Office 365 you can reach those documents from Microsoft Teams.


I’ve noticed that people tend to miss Files in Microsoft Teams, but I think it’s nice and that Microsoft Teams truly is a hub for teamwork.

3 – Shared with me in OneDrive

The last place I would like to share with you is Shared in OneDrive. As we tend to move towards sharing files instead on sending a copy it can sometimes get a bit messy with all the shared files. This is where Shared with you and by you comes in! This only applies to files in your OneDrive and files that are shared with your account.


To find all the shared files you need to open OneDrive in the browser, I usually go by https://portal.office.com and click OneDrive from there. In the left side navigation, there will be an option called Shared.

Shared in OneDrive

There you will see all files that have been shared with you and all files you have shared with other people. What I like about this is that it will give a consolidated view over all files you’ve shared with different people. Another thing I like is that I quickly can see if people have been modified the files I’ve shared; under Activity you will see the last activity on the file.

Shared with you and by you

If you mark a file you’ve shared there’s an option to manage access, this makes it easy to update access for many files even if they’re located in different folders in your OneDrive.

Manage access for shared files

Click to manage access, there you can see who you shared with, grant access and stop sharing the file.

How you can manage access

With a combination of these tips and searching I usually find all the files I’m looking for - I hope you will too!

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