By Anisa Williams, BSS Staff
In the world of Microsoft 365, SharePoint and OneDrive often get mixed up, but they serve very different (and useful) purposes. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), knowing which application to use can make a huge difference in your processes, workflow, and the security of your data.
OneDrive: Your Personal Workspace
Think of OneDrive as your personal filing cabinet. It’s designed for your individual folders and files, giving each employee a secure space to save drafts, personal documents, and work-in-progress materials. Files are private by default but can be shared selectively with coworkers or external colleagues. It’s especially useful for remote workers or team members who need access to their files across multiple devices.
OneDrive integrates seamlessly with Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, and Teams, making it ideal for personal productivity from any location. Your IT company should setup your Desktop and Documents to sync to OneDrive, so everything is accessible to you regardless of your device.
A note of caution, however: Sharing files from your OneDrive limits what and how others can access them. And if an employee ONLY saves their files in OneDrive but then leaves the company, there is a 30-day window to access and move OneDrive files from their unlicensed account to a different OneDrive or SharePoint location. Work with your IT company to add moving OneDrive files from the terminated employee’s account to a company archive as part of your offboarding process.
SharePoint: Your Team’s Server in the Cloud
SharePoint is made for collaboration and file sharing. It provides a cloud-based file structure where teams, departments, or project groups can store and manage documents together. Version control, structured folders, and granular permission settings make it easy to organize and secure all your business content.
When you upload a file to a Teams channel or a shared workspace, it’s actually stored in SharePoint. This makes SharePoint the foundation of group collaboration across all Microsoft 365 apps, supporting everything from document workflows to reporting.
SharePoint works best when the subsites and folder structure are planned ahead of time, reflecting department-based permissions and how users search for and interact with files. Depending on the size of your company, using SharePoint subsites can create additional layers of access restrictions for sensitive or confidential data, such as Accounting or Human Resources.
The biggest hurdle that IT companies see when working with SharePoint is a limitation of 400 characters for the URL path and file name. If you have a file with a long file name within many nested folders, you may not be able to access or open those files. For example, the following URL path is 11 folders deep with a URL total of 400 characters. Spaces are represented as “%20”, which adds to the final count:
contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MarketingTeam/Shared%20Documents/Projects/2025%20Initiatives/Website%20Redesign/Phase%201%20Planning/Stakeholder%20Feedback%20Round%201/Design%20Mockups%20and%20Wireframes/Final%20Review%20Assets%20for%20Approval%20and%20Distribution%20to%20External%20Partners%20and%20Vendors%20Q3%202025%20Cycle%20A%20Version%20Final.pdf
Keep your file structure shallow and your file names concise!
Best Case Uses
Use OneDrive when:
- You’re working on personal files, drafts, or works in progress.
- You need to share a document with a small group or external contact.
- You want automatic syncing across devices.
Use SharePoint when:
- You’re collaborating on documents with a team.
- You need centralized access to shared resources.
- You’re managing structured content across departments.
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For business leaders, it's not about choosing one over the other; best practices use both! OneDrive supports individual productivity, while SharePoint encourages collaboration and team access. Together, they form a super-duo that allows your team to securely work anywhere, and your company files are organized, backed up, and always accessible.
