Introduction
If you’ve ever tried to figure out where Microsoft 365 actually stores your data, you know it’s not a straightforward answer. Does Teams content live in SharePoint? Does Whiteboard use its own storage? What about Forms, Planner, or Viva Engage? Microsoft’s documentation answers some of these questions, but never all of them, and rarely in one place.
For IT admins, this matters more than it might seem. Knowing where data lives is essential for planning permissions, understanding backup coverage, managing offboarding, and setting the right user expectations.
This post tries fix that. I’ve mapped out the storage location for every major Microsoft 365 product and service, so you have a single, reliable reference whenever you need it.
Let’s see
I tried to add the source for every documented storage locations, this does not account for any geolocation, this just expresses the service used as the storage location.
| Product/Service | Storage Location |
|---|---|
| Exchange Online mailbox | Exchange Online |
| OneDrive | SharePoint Online |
| SharePoint Online sites | SharePoint Online |
| Planner | Information you share in Planner is stored in Dataverse and Azure. Source. |
| Teams messages | Cosmos DB Source. |
| Teams files | Files in Group Chats are saved in OneDrive. Files in Channels are saved in the SharePoint site associated to the Teams team/channel. Standard channels use the SharePoint site that is created when you create the team Each private channel has its own SharePoint site for file storage. Each shared channel has its own SharePoint site for file storage. Source. |
| Microsoft Lists | OneDrive or SharePoint Online Source. |
| Microsoft Loop | OneDrive or SharePoint Online or SharePoint Embedded See here and here. |
| Copilot Pages | SharePoint Embedded See here. |
| Microsoft To-Do | Exchange Online mailbox Source. |
| Forms | Official documentation only mentions geographical location. Assumption is that it uses its own storage solution. Source. |
| ClipChamp | OneDrive or SharePoint Source. |
| Whiteboard | OneDrive. (It was Azure storage in the past). Source. |
| Bookings | All Bookings data is stored within the Microsoft 365 platform and in Exchange Online. Bookings follows all data storage policies that are set by Microsoft, which are the same policies that all apps in Microsoft 365 follow. Bookings uses shared mailboxes in Exchange to store customer, staff, service, and appointment details. Compliance policies for shared mailboxes in Exchange also apply for Bookings mailboxes. All customer data (including information provided by customers when booking) is captured in Bookings and is stored within the app, thus it’s stored within Exchange Online. Source. |
| Viva Amplify, Connections, Engage, Glint, Insights, Learn, Pulse | Multiple locations. See here. |
Andrés Gorzelany 
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