Will Holland is a Principal Software Engineer at ThreeWill, where he champions our core value of “Better Together” with his focus on helping employees thrive by building meaningful connections in the workplace. Outside of work, Will can usually be found at the nearest soccer pitch, enjoying watching his children play or rooting for Atlanta United FC.
Microsoft Teams is a powerful collaboration tool that allows you to communicate, share, and work with your team members in real time. One of the benefits of Teams is that you can access all your files from different sources in one place, such as OneDrive, SharePoint, or other Teams channels and chats. However, sometimes you may have trouble finding the files you need among the hundreds or thousands of files that are stored or shared in Teams. That’s why Teams has a handy feature that lets you favorite the files you use most often, so you can easily access them from the Files tab in the left navigation pane. In this blog post, we will show you how to boost your productivity by favoriting files in Microsoft Teams.
How to Favorite Files using the OneDrive App
If the file you need to favorite is in OneDrive, you’ll need to use the built-in OneDrive app. Remember, OneDrive is where Microsoft Teams saves files shared in chats. So, if want to favorite a file someone shared via chat, you’ll find them here as well.
Once you open the OneDrive app in Microsoft Teams, you’ll just need to find your favorite file one last time. Once there, hover your mouse over the “row” where the file is displayed, and you’ll see a sad and empty little star. Clicking that guy will let it know that you’ve favorited it, as it fills itself in; overcome with joy.
How to Favorite a File Shared in a Teams Channel
If the file you need to favorite happens to have been shared in the channel of one of your teams, the process is similar. Instead of opening the OneDrive app, however, you’ll open the channel instead.
Once there, click the Files tab (#1 in the photo above). Like with our files in OneDrive, you’ll need to hover your mouse over the row. Unfortunately, we won’t find a star here but, instead, three little dots (#2).
Technically, these are called an ellipsis, but this isn’t a linguistics blog. Clicking them will open a new menu full of options, one of which says “Favorite”. Clicking that will also add it to your list of favorited files. You’ll know it worked because of the notification Teams will display, shown to the below.
You can also click the circle next to the file name (#1 below) to select the file. Doing so will give us our three dots towards the top of the window (#2). Just like before, clicking the dots will open up a menu, revealing our “Favorite” option (and our cosmic friend).
Where to find your Favorited Files
No journey is complete until we’re back where we began. In this case, that means the OneDrive app for Teams.
Once you’re back there, you’ll find a the “Favorites” button in the left-hand navigation of the OneDrive app (#2). Clicking it will reveal all your favorited files, right where you left them.
Conclusion
Favoriting files in Microsoft Teams is a simple and effective way to boost your productivity and save time. By favoriting the files you use most often, you can easily access them from the OneDrive app in the left navigation pane of Teams, without having to search or browse through different sources. You can also unfavorite a file at any time by clicking on the star icon again, making sure that only the most important content stays on your list. Try favoriting your files in Teams today and see how it can improve your workflow and efficiency.
If you’re ready to learn more about how Microsoft 365 can boost productivity, contact us today!
