Renaming URLs in a SharePoint Online site

One of the questions I’ve grown to dread in my years of working with SharePoint is “can we change the URL of my site?” Up until now, the answer was pretty much no, unless you wanted to go through major hassles to create a new site, copy over content, etc. However, Microsoft has finally rolled out a feature to allow you to truly rename a URL, *and* it handles automatic redirects if someone uses the old URL. There are some caveats that I’ll point out at the end of this tip, but here’s how it works…

Adding Comments to non-Microsoft files in SharePoint Online and OneDrive

One of the many benefits of storing files in SharePoint Online or OneDrive as opposed to file shares is the ability to add comments to the file for additional context and collaboration. However, until recently that was only allowed for Microsoft files (such as Word, Excel, etc.) Now the ability to add comments has been extended to non-Microsoft files, such as PDF files. Here’s how that works…

Button and Call To Action web parts on SharePoint Online pages

Have you ever needed a quick button on a web page? Or perhaps a way to get people to notice and do something? You can now use the Button and the Call To Action web parts on Modern SharePoint Online web parts. Here’s how…

Weather and World Clock web parts on SharePoint Online pages

In SharePoint Online modern web pages, there are two new web parts that might look nice on your intranet home page… the Weather and the World Clock web parts. Here’s how they work…

SharePoint News and Page Recommendations feature

This is a new feature in SharePoint Online that will help people find content related to their specific interests based on prior page views and activities. It’s the News and Page Recommendations feature that is added to the bottom of newly created pages in SharePoint Online.

SharePoint Online now has a Footer properties option

One of the latest updates to SharePoint Online is the addition of a Footer option in the Change The Look Settings list. It’s a nice way to have a graphical user interface (GUI) for adding and maintaining a footer in your Communication sites (it’s not currently available in Team sites), and it applies to all the pages in the site. Here’s how it works…

Using the Preview feature in SharePoint Online document libraries

When you’re in SharePoint Online, opening up files can often cause new version history entries to be made based on how things are set up. This can be a major issue if people have alerts set to notify them if anything changes! To prevent that, you can use the Preview feature to quickly open the file without causing any version history changes. Here’s how that works…

My slides from the Minnesota Microsoft 365 User Group presentation on SharePoint Migrations

Version History on Office files shared in SharePoint and OneDrive

When you have an Excel, Word, or PowerPoint file open that has been shared in SharePoint Online or OneDrive, there’s an easy way to see when and who updated the file using the Version History icon in the Ribbon Bar. You can also easily see the actual file in earlier versions. Here’s how…