I’m Confused-Microsoft Lists App or SharePoint Lists (Episode 65 Transcript)

Hey there, and welcome back to 1,001 Business Problems Solved with Microsoft Teams. I’m your hostess, Annie Rynd, and today we’re clearing up a common point of confusion that I hear from clients all the time about Lists.

Now, if you aren’t very familiar with Lists, or SharePoint Lists as they’ve been known for more than twenty years, and you’re not sure how they could help your business, I encourage you to go back and listen to two of our most popular episodes, 56 and 57.

But today, rather than tell you how to leverage Lists to streamline your processes, I want to tell you what the difference is between Microsoft Lists app and SharePoint lists.

If you’ve ever scratched your head wondering if they’re the same thing — or if one replaced the other — you’re not alone. So let’s break it down in plain English.

Here’s the big idea: Microsoft Lists is a modern, user-friendly app that sits on top of SharePoint lists. It’s not a replacement. It’s more like a glow-up.

Think of SharePoint lists as the engine of a car. They’ve been around for years, and they’re super powerful. You can use them to track tasks, manage inventory, log issues…basically anything that fits into rows and columns. They live inside SharePoint sites, and they’re great for structured data.

But here’s the catch: SharePoint lists can feel a little…well, clunky. Especially if you’re not a SharePoint pro. We obviously love them here and it’s a great benefit for you to learn how to get into the guts of them and make them really hum, but not everyone has the time to dive in that deeply.

That’s where Microsoft Lists comes in. It’s like the sleek dashboard that makes driving the car a whole lot easier. It gives you a clean, modern interface to work with those same lists — but without needing to dive into the full SharePoint experience.

So when you open Microsoft Lists, you’re actually still using SharePoint under the hood. You’re just getting a much smoother ride.

Let’s say you’re managing a project in Microsoft Teams. You want to track tasks, assign owners, set due dates. You could open Excel — but that gets messy fast. Instead, you pop open the Lists app right inside Teams, choose a template like “ Issue Tracker, ” and boom — you’re up and running in minutes.

Now, I personally think you can do a better job building your list from scratch in Lists because it’s not difficult, but hey…you want a quick solution!

And guess what? This new list is stored in the SharePoint site behind your Team. So you get all the benefits of SharePoint — like permissions, version history, and automation — but with a much friendlier face.

Now, here’s a quick side-by-side to help you remember:

• SharePoint lists are the foundation. They’re powerful, flexible, and live inside SharePoint sites.
• Microsoft Lists is the modern app that makes those lists easier to create, view, and manage — especially for everyday users.

You can use Microsoft Lists on the web, in Teams, or on your phone. It comes with beautiful templates, color coding, rules, and formatting options that make your data pop. And if you’re a power user? You can still customize forms with Power Apps or build workflows with Power Automate.

So, when should you use which?

• If you’re already deep in SharePoint, go ahead and use SharePoint lists.
• But if you want a faster, friendlier way to manage information — especially inside Teams — Microsoft Lists is your new best friend.

And here’s the best part: you don’t have to choose. They’re two sides of the same coin. Microsoft Lists just makes SharePoint lists more accessible to more people.

So the next time someone on your team says, “Wait, isn’t this just SharePoint? ”—you can smile and say, “Yes, but better .”

Now, go back and listen to episodes 56 and 57 so you can be enlightened to all the process improvements you can build in Lists.

And, as always, if you need just a little coaching or even a turnkey solution for a time-consuming process in your business, go on over to countyquest.com. We’ve been streamlining processes with SharePoint since 2003. We’ll have a solution up in a jiffy and also teach you how to do it on your own if you wish.

So…I hope you have a killer week this week and until next Monday, this is Annie, signing off!