Drawings
Drawings are full Excalidraw canvases that live as documents in your workspace — sketch architecture, whiteboard a flow, or diagram together in real time, then embed the result in a page.
Create a drawing
Section titled “Create a drawing”- In the sidebar, click the New (+) button next to the Pages header at the top of the file tree.
- Choose New drawing, name it, and confirm.
To create a drawing inside a folder, right-click the folder and choose New drawing here — or hover over the folder row and use its small + (Add inside) button.
📷 Screenshot here: The sidebar + New menu open with New drawing highlighted, alongside a folder context menu showing New drawing here.
The drawing opens as its own document with the complete Excalidraw toolset — shapes, arrows, freehand, text, and the laser pointer. It is stored as an .excalidraw file in the workspace, next to your pages.
Draw together
Section titled “Draw together”Drawings are collaborative in real time. Everyone with the drawing open sees each other’s changes and live pointer positions as they draw — the laser pointer is shared too, so you can point at things during a call. Readers get a Read-only view; editing follows the same workspace permissions as pages (Permissions).
Drawings autosave silently as you work — just like pages, there is nothing to click and nothing to watch. A status chip appears in the top-right corner of the canvas only when something needs your attention: Unsaved changes if a save is taking unusually long, Save failed if it went wrong, and “Drawing changed elsewhere — reopen to load the latest” if the drawing was updated while your copy was stale. When a shown warning resolves, the chip flashes Saved and disappears. A clear canvas means all your work is safe. Read-only views always show a Read-only chip.
Your zoom and pan position is remembered per device, so a big canvas reopens where you left it.
Embed a drawing in a page
Section titled “Embed a drawing in a page”- In a page, type
/and choose Embed drawing — or type![[and pick the drawing. - The page shows a live preview of the canvas.
- Click Open canvas on the embed to jump into the full drawing.
No drawings yet? The picker’s Create new drawing entry creates the .excalidraw file next to your page and embeds it in one step — type a name first to use it as the drawing’s title.
The embed updates when the drawing changes, so an architecture sketch embedded in a design page never goes stale.
Can I use a drawing from another workspace? No. Embeds resolve within the current workspace. Use Copy to workspace on the drawing first.
Is a drawing exportable?
The .excalidraw file is yours in OneDrive/SharePoint like every other document — download it from the file tree with Download. See Where your pages live.
Up next: Lists and Base documents — editable Microsoft Lists as tables, boards and calendars.