Your First SharePoint Site

To create a site, open the SharePoint start page and select '+ Create site', then choose between a team site (backed by a Microsoft 365 Group, ideal for a working project team) and a communication site (no group, ideal for a polished one-way intranet page). During creation you choose a site name, a URL suffix, a privacy setting (public or private), and optionally a language and site classification, and within a minute or two SharePoint provisions the underlying site collection, applies a default theme, and emails the designated owner a confirmation.

Once the site exists, add a document library from the '+ New' menu (a 'Documents' library is created by default on team sites) and populate it by dragging files directly into the browser or syncing it locally via the OneDrive sync client, which mirrors the library to a folder on your computer. Add a list the same way — choosing 'List', starting from a blank list, or importing structure from an Excel spreadsheet — and use the column settings to add typed fields such as a 'Status' choice column or a 'Due Date' date column so the list can support filtering and views immediately.

New sites come with three default SharePoint groups — Owners (full control), Members (edit), and Visitors (read-only) — and the fastest way to grant access is adding people to the appropriate group rather than assigning permissions to individual files one at a time, since group membership changes apply instantly across every library and list that inherits site-level permissions. For content that needs tighter control than the rest of the site, you can break inheritance on a specific library, folder, or even a single item and assign unique permissions, though Microsoft's own guidance warns that overusing unique permissions makes a site much harder to audit and maintain over time.