How do you add a folder tab/feature in a personal 365 Teams to save and share files with others

Question

How do I add a folder tab/feature in a my personal 365 Teams to save documents within folders, and share files/access with other Teams users?

In my last role with a large company we had all the features of Teams, what do I have to do as a single personal user get the same/similar full Teams features?

Answer 1

Dear Emma Hobson,

Thank you for posting your question to the Microsoft Q&A forum.

I understand it can be very confusing to switch from a full-featured corporate version of Teams to a personal account, only to find that familiar features like the "Files" tab are missing. Your observation is completely correct, and your experience highlights a key difference between the two versions.

To answer your question: the feature to add a "Files" tab in Teams channel or a dedicated folder tab directly within a chat is not available in Microsoft Teams (personal). This feature is exclusive to the Microsoft Teams (work or school) versions that are included with Microsoft 365 Business plans.

This is the reason for the difference you see between your personal account and the experience you had in your previous role. To get the "full Teams features" (with dedicated Channels, "Files" tabs, Planner integration, etc.), you, would need to purchase a Microsoft 365 Business plan (like "Business Basic" or "Business Standard").

However, for your current Teams Personal account, there is a standard workaround that achieves a similar result. Instead of creating the folder tab inside Teams, you can create the folder in your OneDrive and share a single, persistent link to your chat.

Here are the steps for this workaround:

• Open OneDrive (go to onedrive.live.com or open the OneDrive folder on your PC).
• Create a new folder (e.g., "Shared Project Files") > Add all the documents you want to share into this folder.
• Right-click on the folder > select Share.
• Choose your permissions (e.g., "Allow edit") > Get a share link.
• Go to your Teams group chat > Paste the OneDrive folder link into a message.

This way, everyone in your group chat can click that one link to access all the shared documents in an organized folder structure. This is the intended workflow for file collaboration in Teams Personal.

I hope these steps help you get your files working again. Feel free to let us know the results, I’ll be happy to guide you further and make sure you get this sorted out.

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Answer 2

In the personal Teams Free application, the "Files" tab is available in each chat screen.

Files can also be attached from the chat text box.