Introducing a new file experience for groups in Outlook on the web

We’ve recently announced a number of enhancements to Office 365 Groups, such as the ability to collaborate via email with external team members and the new Outlook Groups iPad app.

Today, we are announcing a new file experience for groups in Outlook on the web. People frequently rely on email to edit and share documents with their teams, and this new experience makes it easier to collaborate on documents in Outlook on the web.

Here’s a look at the new experience:

Access all your group documents—A new file view gives you access to all the documents shared with the group, including files shared as email attachments, files stored in the group’s SharePoint document library and files shared from OneDrive or other SharePoint document libraries.

Co-author and communicate updates quickly—Now you can edit a document and reply via email side-by-side, so no need to switch contexts to update a document and communicate about the changes with your colleagues.

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You can access the new Files view from the group’s header (next to Conversations) in Outlook on the web. From there, you can create new Office documents (such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint), view, edit or download files. You can also easily track who has updated the file and reach out to them using Skype for Business.

In addition, you can edit files sent as email attachments to the group, send a reply to the group and store a copy in SharePoint to maintain version control going forward. When you click Edit and reply, the file is automatically added to a new folder in the SharePoint document library called Email attachments, creating a single version for the file, enabling co-authoring for the group and making it very easy to track changes.

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In addition to the new Files experience described above, you can easily navigate to the group’s SharePoint document library to access all the files stored online and leverage SharePoint’s rich content management capabilities, such as track the activity on a file, create custom views, share files or folders with others or sync files with OneDrive for Business, to name a few.

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We see groups in Outlook as the modern version of distribution lists (DLs)—so we’ve made it very easy to upgrade DLs to a group inbox in Outlook with one click via the Exchange admin center.

The new groups in Outlook on the web file experience is available to Office 365 First Release customers this week. Try it out and provide your feedback in our technical community, and submit your ideas to our UserVoice page. For more information, see the user documentation.

—Christophe Fiessinger, @cfiessinger, senior program manager for the Office 365 Groups team

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