Every team has a shared library: a folder tree plus documents that all joined members can see and manage. It works just like your personal folder tree, only shared. It appears as a Team documents card on the team page in the Explorer.
What everyone can do
A team document belongs to the whole team, not just to the person who made it. Any joined member can:
- create a new document or folder in the library,
- open and edit every document,
- rename, duplicate, and delete a document,
- re-folder a document within the team, or move it to another team they belong to.
Deleting a team document moves it to the team's Trash, which every joined member can see in the Trash (the More group of the Explorer sidebar, or Open Trash in Settings) and restore from. See Trash.
Joined membership grants edit access to every document in the library. There are no per-folder or per-member permissions inside a team: everyone who has joined can manage everything. People with a pending, un-accepted invite get nothing until they accept.
A few things stay with the document's owner (the person who created it, or who moved it in): creating share links and setting a share password. Other members open the document directly from the library and don't need a link. A team document also can't be shared to the Community, since it belongs to the team.
How documents are placed
A document lives in exactly one place: your personal tree, or one team's library. Within a team, a document sits either in a folder or at the team's root, listed beside its folders.
- Moving a document into a team files it in that team's library and removes it from your personal lists. Only the document's owner can move a personal document into a team.
- Moving a document out of a team into your own personal library transfers ownership to you, the mover, since personal folders are tied to their owner. (If the owner is the one moving it out, ownership stays with them.)
- Moving a document to another team whose members don't include its owner also transfers ownership to you, so the document never stays owned by someone outside the team that holds it.
- Re-foldering within the team can be done by any joined member.
Change Folder opens the same browser as the new-document Location step: pick a space first (My documents, or one of your teams), then browse into the folder you want, so you can file a document anywhere you have access from one place. A document already in a folder opens the picker where it is, that folder selected. On a team's own page the picker opens on that team, with My documents and your other teams one step back, under All spaces, so a team document can always be moved back to your personal tree.
When someone leaves
When a member leaves the team or is removed, the documents and folders they created in the library stay with the team: ownership passes to a remaining member (the longest-standing Admin). If they have one of the team's documents open at the time, they lose access straight away.
When a team is deleted
Deleting a team never destroys anyone's work. Its documents are re-homed to the root of their owners' My documents, and the team's folders are dropped. Each member keeps the documents they own.
A document in a team library shows a Team badge in the editor instead of "Private", since every joined member can open it. If you also share that document with a link, it reads Shared as normal: share links and team membership are separate, independent grants.
Use New document from within a team folder so the fresh document lands in the folder you are browsing rather than at the root of your My documents.
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