File Sharing and Receiving with Office 365

Most of our clients have moved to remote working in the past few weeks. Now that the dust is settled and things aren’t quite as chaotic, we’re getting a lot of questions about how to share documents. Let’s jump right in.

Stop Sending Email Attachments

There are a few reasons why sending attachments through email is bad. First of all, it takes up space, every document attachment takes up space in your cloud storage. If you download an attachment to your hard drive, it then takes up space on your hard drive. If your documents are synced with OneDrive, then there is another place that takes up storage. Now think about every single attachment. That’s a lot of wasted storage space!

There is also a limit on how much storage space per email that you can send, and most likely limits on the emails that your recipient can receive.

While there are cases in which you will have to send an attachment, most of the time, using Office 365 you can simply send a link to the attachment instead.

What Happens When You Share a Document Link?

Basically, what happens is that you open up permissions on a specific document. This doesn’t affect permissions on folders or your OneDrive or SharePoint sites.

Send Document Links to Teams or other Places

When you send a document link you aren’t limited to Email. You can send documents via Teams, text message, or any place where you can copy and paste text to. In Teams you can add a document link right in a chat or meeting.

Send Document Links Outside of your Organization

These document links work inside your organization as well as outside your organization. You can set limits on the document link and you can revoke those permissions any time.

Options for Sharing

There are several options available when you share documents via a link. Some of these options might not be available due to administrator settings.

  • Who the link will work for:
    • Anyone with the link –  anyone with the link will be able to utilize the link with the settings you specify.
    • People within your organization with the link.
    • People with existing access – Those who already have access to the specific place this document is saved to.
    • Specific people – designated by email address.
  • Allow Editing – Allow or don’t for those with the link to edit the document.
  • Block download. – keep the download from being downloaded if you select this option.
  • Send – This emails the link to your recipient for you.
  • Copy Link – This copies the link so that you can paste somewhere for your recipient.
  • Outlook – This option starts and email for you to edit with the link in the body.

The screenshots below show these options.

How to Send a Document Link

Directly from your document in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, other Office 365 apps; click the Share option to the top/right-hand side of the screen.

How to Open a Document from an Email

If you selected the “Send” button from the options above; the recipient of the link will receive an email like the one below. Your recipient will select “Open” to open the document directly in their web browser.

File sharing is an easy way to keep connected with your colleagues during this stay-at-home order. Sending documents to vendors and other external users is a snap using the Share function. Give it a try and see! As always if you have any questions or want further training please give us a call!!

About Harbor Computer Services


Harbor Computer Services is an IT firm servicing Southeastern Michigan. We work exclusively under contract with our clients to provide technology direction and either become the IT department or provide assistance to the internal IT they already have. We have won many awards for our work over the years, including the worldwide Microsoft Partner of the Year in 2010. We’re the smallest firm to have ever won this most prestigious award. Most recently we were recognized as one of the top 20 visionaries in small business IT by ChannelPro Magazine (2015). And in 2016 as the top Michigan IT firm for Manufacturing. There are a few simple things that make Harbor Computer Services the best choice for your business. •We are Professionals •We are Responsible •We are Concerned About The Success of Your Business

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