Understanding your T: and X: Drives

Why what you see depends on where you look

Both drives connect to the same Microsoft 365 environment — but they use different lenses to decide what to show you. T: looks through the lens of Teams membership. X: looks through the lens of SharePoint permissions. Most of the time they show the same things. But not always — and knowing why prevents a lot of confusion.

Common Questions Explained

"Why can I see something in X: but not in T:?"

The file or folder exists in SharePoint, but isn't tied to a Teams channel. This happens when files are uploaded directly to the root of the document library, or when folders are created in the root of the Documents folder in SharePoint (or via X:) rather than through Teams. Since Teams only knows about channels, it—and the T: drive—has no knowledge of those items.

For folders in the root of the SharePoint document library, it's possible to get them to show up in Teams by creating a new Teams channel with the exact name as the existing folder. This will convert that standard folder into a Channel folder. Using the above example, a Team Owner of Marketing Team could go into Teams and add a standard channel called Archive. The Archive folder in SharePoint would convert to a Teams Channel folder, and within 20-30 minutes be shown in the T: drive.

Please note: Teams has restrictions on what special characters you can use in a channel name. You'll need to rename the SharePoint folder name if it includes any of the following characters:

~ # % & * { } + / \ : < > ? | ' "

If you have questions about this, please put in a helpdesk ticket.

"Why can I see something in T: but not in X:?"

This is almost always a private channel. When Teams creates a private channel, it provisions and entirely separate SharePoint site for it—it is not stored in the main Team's document library at all. The X: drive is scoped to the main Team site, so it has no path to that private channel content. T: surfaces it because our Cloud Drive Mapper software discovers it through your Teams membership.

Why a separate site? Microsoft designed private channels this way intentionally—a separate SharePoint site gives private channels their own permissions boundary, completely independent of the main Team. Cloud Drive Mapper respects that boundary; T: finds it through membership, but X: has no link to it. There is no way to have a private channel's folder show up in the X: drive.

The simple rule of thumb

If you can see it in X: but not T: — It was created in SharePoint, not in Teams.

If you can see it in T: but not X: — It's a private channel, which lives on its own separate site.

Either way, your content is safe and accessible; it's just a matter of which drive provides the path to it.