How can I tell how much storage space I have available in SharePoint Online?

Provided you are an administrator for your Office 365 account, you can view information about your SharePoint Online storage in the SharePoint admin center.  You can access the admin center by going to the Office 365 portal and clicking the tile that says Admin. Then, select SharePoint under Admin centers on the left side. On the main page of the SharePoint admin center, you can view your overall storage limit and what portion of that…

Are there any free training courses available for SharePoint Online?

Microsoft has several online training courses for SharePoint Online that you can take advantage of.  Topics range from an introduction to SharePoint document libraries to creating and setting up a SharePoint list, with the majority of the courses geared towards users that are new to SharePoint.  Each course also has a quick reference card that you can download and keep handy.  You can access these great Microsoft resources here.

I’d like to share some files with one of my clients. Can I do this with SharePoint without having to pay for an extra Office 365 license for them?

Your Office 365 subscription includes Partner Access Licenses that you can use to allow anyone outside of your organization to access SharePoint.  This is called external sharing.  External sharing is turned on for your entire SharePoint instance by default, but that setting can be changed by an Office 365 administrator.  When external sharing is turned on, there is quite a bit of flexibility in how it works.  An administrator can turn external sharing on…

I’m not sure if moving my files onto SharePoint Online will be worth the effort involved. What will my team gain from this transition?

While moving to and getting to know a new piece of technology can be a daunting task, here are some of the benefits you’ll immediately be able to take advantage when you move your files to SharePoint Online.  Set permissions on individual document or on folders. You no longer have to worry about where to place sensitive materials not everyone on your team needs access to. Utilize automatic versioning controls on documents so…

Do I have to access the files I put in SharePoint Online and OneDrive via my browser?

While you can always access the files you store in Office 365 from your favorite browser, another great way to interact with them is via Microsoft’s OneDrive sync client.  Syncing creates a local copy of your OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online Document Libraries on your machine that you can access via Windows File Explorer.  In addition to allowing you to use your files offline, this gives you the ability to work…

Why do I get an error when I click on Open with Explorer in SharePoint Online?

Open with Explorer is a feature in SharePoint that allows you to interact with the files you have stored in SharePoint via the familiar Windows File Explorer interface.  Open with Explorer is only available when using Internet Explorer as your browser. To utilize Open with Explorer, navigate to your SharePoint Online document library, then click on the Library tab at the top left.  Note that you may need to select Return to Classic…

How do I create a new permission group in SharePoint?

Navigate in your browser to the SharePoint site for which you would like to create the new group.  In the upper right corner, click on the gear, then on Site Settings. Click on People and groups under Users and Permissions. Select More… on the left to see a list of all groups already on the site. Select New Group under New. Enter a name for the new group and a description if…

How do I change the permissions on a document library folder in SharePoint?

Provided you have the appropriate administrative permissions yourself, you will start by navigating in your browser to the Document Library folder you would like to change the permissions for. Click on the three dots to the right of the folder and then the three dots to the right of Share. Click on Shared With and then Advanced. Select Stop Inheriting Permissions at the top. You can then select any of the groups…

My team has a list of contacts we all need access to. How can I use Office 365 to house this information?

There are a number of different ways you can centrally store information in Office 365 for contacts outside of your organization.  Which option you should choose largely depends on how your users need to access and update the information. Exchange Online Contacts – allows you to create external contacts that will appear as part of your Global Address List.  Users can find the contacts in their Outlook Address Book or by searching the company directory on their mobile device.  You…