Module 2 of StartCloud's Microsoft 365 Everyday Skills learning pathway, in five short units with a knowledge check: why an emailed attachment becomes an uncontrolled photocopy, how to share a link instead and choose between specific people, people in your organisation and anyone with the link, working on one document at the same time with coauthoring and comments, and using version history to recover an earlier version without keeping safety copies.
Stop Emailing Attachments
The photocopy problem
You have almost certainly lived through this one. A quote goes out for review as an attachment. Two people reply with changes, each working on their own copy. Somebody forwards it to a third person who was not on the original. A week later there are five versions and a genuine argument about which one went to the client.
The moment a file becomes an attachment, it stops being the file and becomes a photocopy. Every reply makes another one, and none of them know the others exist.
You have created a copy and lost control of it. You cannot update it, cannot take it back, and cannot tell who has it. If the numbers change tomorrow, everyone is still looking at yesterday's figures and nobody knows.
There is one file. Everyone opens the same thing, so everyone sees the current version. You can change who has access afterwards, and if the numbers change tomorrow the link still points at the truth.
Quoting an old price. Sending a client a document with the previous client's details still in it. Working from a spreadsheet somebody superseded a fortnight ago. Every one of those starts as a harmless extra copy, and every one of them has cost an Australian business real money and real embarrassment.
Sharing a link is the same amount of effort as attaching a file, once you have done it twice. The Share button sits at the top right of any Office document, and it is in OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams too.
The part worth slowing down for is the choice it offers you about who the link works for, because that is the difference between sensible sharing and accidentally handing something to the internet.
Only the people you name can open it, and they have to sign in. This is the safest option and the right default for anything with client details, pricing or personal information in it.
Anyone at your business who has the link can open it. Genuinely useful for internal documents, templates and anything you would happily leave on a desk in the office.
No sign-in needed. Whoever holds the link gets in, including anyone they forward it to. Sometimes exactly what you need for an external client, and never the option to pick without thinking. Some businesses have this switched off entirely, which is a reasonable decision.
You can decide whether people can edit or only view, which saves a lot of accidental changes. And whoever shared the file can change or remove access later by editing or deleting the link. An attachment offers you neither of those. Once it has gone, it has gone.
If you attach a file that already lives in OneDrive or SharePoint, Outlook usually offers to send it as a link rather than a copy. Take the offer. It is the same click and you keep control of the file.
Once everyone is opening the same file, something better becomes possible: you can all be in it at once. No more waiting for somebody to finish and send it back, and no more merging two sets of changes by hand at five o'clock.
Coloured markers show where other people are working, with their names on them. It stops the two of you rewriting the same paragraph in different directions, and it is oddly reassuring when you are working late.
For files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, changes save automatically. Losing an afternoon's work because you did not press save stops being a thing that can happen to you.
Highlight the bit you mean and comment on it, then tag the person with an @ so they get told. The feedback lives next to the thing it is about, instead of in an email that has to be read alongside the document.
Saving your own copy first "just to be safe". It is a completely understandable instinct built up over years of files going wrong, and it recreates the exact problem this module is about. The version history in the next unit is what makes that safety copy unnecessary.
Here is the feature that makes the whole approach safe, and the one hardly anybody knows is there. Files kept in OneDrive and SharePoint keep their own history. You can look at what a document said earlier and put it back.
It lives under Version history, in the file menu in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and in the right-click menu in OneDrive and SharePoint on the web.
- Somebody deleted three pages and saved. You can bring them back
- The formatting went strange and you cannot undo your way out
- You want to see what changed between Tuesday and now, and who did it
- A formula got flattened into a number and the spreadsheet stopped adding up
Changes to a file that lives in OneDrive or SharePoint, including anything in Teams. This is another good reason for work files to live in those places rather than on your desktop.
A backup. Version history is per file and it does not run forever. It will not help if a whole library is wiped or if the problem is discovered months later. Backups are a separate thing, and worth asking your IT provider about.
One thing to try before you move on. Open a document you have been working on for a while, find Version history, and just look. Seeing your own file's past sitting there is usually the moment the safety copy habit finally dies.
- learn.microsoft.com: Intro to file collaboration in Microsoft 365, including modern attachments and coauthoring
- learn.microsoft.com: Identify business requirements for SharePoint and OneDrive, including sharable links
- learn.microsoft.com: External sharing overview
Checked against Microsoft documentation at the time of writing (August 2026). Which sharing options you can actually see depends on what your business has enabled, so some may be missing by design.
Knowledge check
5 quick questions. Get 4 right and the module is yours.
1. Why is emailing an attachment worse than sending a link?
2. You are sharing a quote containing client pricing. Which link type is the right default?
3. Two of you need to work on the same document this afternoon. What is the best approach?
4. Somebody deleted three pages from a shared document yesterday and saved. What now?
5. Is version history the same as a backup?