TABLE OF CONTENTS

SharePoint jargon

Files are documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, images, etc.

Sites are like homepages for departments, working groups, projects, etc, with a collection of folders and documents to work with. They function similarly to a network drive.

People are members of a site who you can collaborate with on documents.

News are announcements made to members  of a specific site.


Signing in and going to a SharePoint site

  1. Go to office.com, and sign into your account with your PennKey.
  2. In the upper left corner, click on search, then type SharePoint in the search.
  3. Click on a site under Recent or Frequent sites. You can also search for specific site via the search bar on top of the window.




Open a document

  1. Go to a SharePoint site.
  2. Click on Documents.
  3. Click on a file to open it in browser or click on the three dots icon to open the file in your desktop app.


Search for something

  1. Type into the searchSearch box located in the middle of the title bar at the top of the window. 
  2. Filter your results by type, such as Files, Sites, People, or News. 


File/folder actions you should know about

Open: Open a file in browser or in the desktop app.

Preview: See what's in the file without opening it.

Share: If you have permission, you can share the file/folder with other people with access to the SharePoint site, or share with people outside your department or outside Penn. The person you're sharing with will be notified.

Copy link: Quickly get a share link to send to someone else. Settings can be adjusted so that only certain people can access the file/folder via the link.

Manage access: Adjust the permissions for who can access a file/folder.

Favorite: Creates a shortcut on the SharePoint site's main page so you can quickly access a specific file/folder.

Download: Download a copy of the file locally to your computer. Editing this file will not edit the file in SharePoint.

Delete: Delete a file, but it will still show up in the Recycle bin.

Rename: Change the name of the file.
Pin to top: Pin the file/folder to the top of the list so it's easy to access. Convenient if you have a lot of items in a folder.
Move to: Move a file/folder to another location (doesn't make a copy).

Copy to: Creates a duplicate file/folder and places it in another location.


Version history


One of the file actions you can choose is Version history, which lets you go back to a previous version of the document. This is helpful in case a document was edited and saved and you can't undo it.

  1. Right click or click on the three dots icon to the right of the file.
  2. Click on Version history, further down the list of file actions. This will pull up a window with a list of the previous versions. You can see who it was modified by.
  3. Here you can find a few options:
    1. Click on a version to preview the file locally in your desktop app.
    2. Click on the arrow icon next to the version date to pull up three version actions.
      1. View - see a preview.
      2. Restore - replace the file in SharePoint with the previous version.
      3. Delete - permanently deletes the version, sending it to the recycle bin.