Create a Microsoft 365 Group from an existing SharePoint site

If you created a modern Team Site in SharePoint Online (SPO) and decided back then, not to connect it to an Office 365 group, it’s totally possible to create this group, and ‘link‘ it to an Office 365 group.

You’ve changed your mind, and you want to take advantage of what the Office 365 groups have to offer. Shared mailbox, Planner, and even Microsoft Teams! So let’s get started, and see how we can accomplish that.
 

Is my Site connected to an Office 365 Group?

You have a couple of ways to check if your Team Site is connected or not to an group.

1. The most obvious way, if your tenant has the new SharePoint Admin Center, is to check if under the column called “Office 365 Group“, it says Yes or No. If the column is not present, go on the right hand side of the page –> click the ellipses –> click on “Customize columns” and tick the “Office 365 Group“ checkbox (can also be re-arranged).

2. If you have a look at your Team Site, look under the site title:

• Does it say Public group? or Private group? If none of these, then your site is not connected.
• On the left panel, do you have a “Conversations” tab? If not, then your site is not connected.

And finally, click on the gear icon, do you see “Connect to new Office 365 group“? If yes, then your site is not connected. So let’s use this to create our O365 group!

Create an Office 365 group from existing modern Team site

As we seen previously, let’s click on “Connect to new Office 365 Group” to… well… create a group 😄 You are now presented with a quick explanation of what’s going to happen by connecting your site to an O365 group.

• Click on Get Started

With regards to the group, below is the info your need to be aware of.

• Group name: By default, this is the site’s title
• Group email address: Suggested, but can be changed (assuming no other groups already use the same email address)
• Site description: optional – but good to have
• Privacy settings: Choose between Public and Private
• Then click on “Connect group”

Add additional owners & members if you wish to do so, and click on Finish.
 

We now see that under the site’s title we have Private or Public group, and the “Conversations” tab is showing up.