OneDrive vs. SharePoint. What’s the Difference?

Microsoft announced in its latest quarterly earnings release that the number of Microsoft 365 subscribers has increased to 50.2 million from January through March 2021.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is becoming more and more common, and understandably, because with the cloud, access is unlimited. The main reason to use cloud-based storage is the ease of access. When you use the cloud, you can access your data and work on documents from almost any device from anywhere as long as you have internet access.

However, SharePoint and OneDrive are often confused. While both SharePoint and OneDrive are Microsoft cloud storage products with common characteristics, they aren’t identical tools.

So, when should you use SharePoint and when should you use OneDrive?

OneDrive – Storage for Individuals

OneDrive, is part of the Microsoft 365 platform and is your own personal storage. OneDrive is like the personal drive you likely have or had at work; similar to your My Documents folder. This is where you'll save documents and files that you don’t want other people in your organization to access.

Perhaps you’re working on a document that you are not quite ready to share with your co-workers. In this case, you would want to store it in your OneDrive. While it's private, you do have the ability to share the document with select people if you wish, but your organization as a whole will not have access to it without your permission.

SharePoint –Storage & Collaboration for Teams

SharePoint is like the shared drive/network drive/file share you likely had at work. 

SharePoint is also part of the Microsoft 365 platform and is where team members can share and work on the same document together in real-time. Here, files aren’t associated with a single user. Instead, they belong to the team itself.

Permissions can be tailored based on who needs to see documents and where the team manager/admin will be able to see everything.

Documents can even be created in OneDrive and then moved to a Team Site in SharePoint later once it requires collaboration with your team.

Think of the “One” in OneDrive as the storage for one person (you). Likewise, the “Share” in SharePoint is your shared storage for files that are meant to be collaborated on.

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