Sharing files in OneDrive is already pretty easy. It’s not too complicated in SharePoint, either. But what if you want to share a SharePoint or OneDrive file with somebody via Outlook? A new Outlook feature (available in a recent Office 365 Update) has made that very simple, and will give you a nice clean link for the purpose.

Here’s how it works. When you’re writing an email, you can do one of the following to get a link to a OneDrive or SharePoint document link into your email:

• Copy a link to a file stored on OneDrive or SharePoint. Then paste that link into the body of an email message.
• On the Message tab, select Link > Insert Link and select a file stored on OneDrive or SharePoint.
• Right-click the body of an email message and select Link > Insert Link. Then select a file stored on OneDrive or SharePoint.

Once you do one of those things, Outlook will automatically add a file type icon (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc…) and shorten the link to just the name of the document instead of the long ugly URL for the document (Note that if you want the long URL, you can by right-click the link and select Show Full URL):

Just like you can when sharing from OneDrive or SharePoint, you can manage the permissions for the link directly in Outlook. You can do so by clicking the link and adjusting the access there:

One of the more useful features is that Outlook will display errors inline if the link will not work for the recipients of the email.

If Outlook is unable to detect if a link will work (e.g. user is offline), a similar error will display.

This integration will make sharing documents much easier for your team.