While writing my latest post I came across the different words, icons and mechanisms to store “content you like and/or want to be able to find quickly later”.
So, I wrote this overview to know what is what. You may be able to use it when writing help texts and do not want to go and look what it’s called, or it may help you to understand what a colleague means exactly. There’s quite a few words and icons used for the same functionality.
I have captured the following for every application:
- Terminology for the action
- Terminology for undoing the action
- Icon
- Where you can find it later
- Anything remarkable
Homepage:
- Add to favourites
- Remove from favourites
- โญ (star)
- Favourites tab on the M365 homepage
- You can add everything that appears in the list to your Favourites. This is one way to save any interesting OneDrive or SharePoint documents for later.
The other way is on the respective Word, Excel and PowerPoint online landing pages, where you can add them to favourites. These will be shown on the Microsoft365 homepage as well.
There was an extra option in SharePoint but that has disappeared.

Delve
- Add to favourites (popup text when you hover over it)
- Remove from favourites
- ๐ท (label)
- Left-hand rail in Delve under Favourites
- Not sure about the exact words in 1. and 2. as I had to test this on my work account and that is in Dutch. (My own tenant only has me, and that means no suggested content)
You can also create Favourite Boards.

Forms
- Add to pinned
- Remove from pinned
- ๐ (pin)
- Forms Homepage under Pinned
- This action does not influence what is on your Microsoft365 homepage and vice versa
Lists
- Favourite this list
- Remove this list from favourites
- โญ (star)
- Lists Homepage under Favourites
- This action does not influence what is on your Microsoft365 homepage and vice versa

OneNote
- Add to pinned
- Remove from pinned
- ๐
- Pinned Notebooks are shown on the OneNote landing page, under the tab “Pinned”.
- So this is different from Word, Excel and PowerPoint while they are usually in the same range.
Outlook
- Pin
- Unpin
- ๐ (pin)
- Pinned mails are shown on top of your Inbox, see also my post “12 reasons why I ๐ Outlook on the web (owa)“
- Only available in Outlook for the web, not in Outlook desktop
Planner
- Add to favourites
- Remove from favourites
- โญ(star)
- Left-hand rail in Planner
- Plans only; you can not favourite an individual task

SharePoint Sites:
- Not following
- Follow
- โญ (star)
- Follow block in left-hand rail on SharePoint homepage, world icon in the SharePoint app bar
- Followed sites also appear as target sites when you copy or move files from OneDrive or SharePoint

SharePoint News:
- Save for later
- Remove from your saved items
- ๐ท (label)
- See my earlier post
- Will be shown together with favourited documents, see my earlier posts
Stream
- Add to watchlist
- Remove from watchlist
- ๐ (list)
- My content tab > Watchlist
- You can also “like” a video but there is no list of your likes – “likes” are a compliment to the creator
Sway
- Add to pinned
- Remove from pinned
- ๐ (pin)
- On the Sway homepage, tab “Pinned”
Teams
- Save this message
- Unsave this message
- ๐ท (label)
- Profile picture top right > “Saved”
- You can also Pin a message, but that means you will add the message for everyone in a specific place, so this has a different purpose.

Yammer communities
- None, just an icon underneath the community image + description
- Remove from favorites
- ๐งก (heart)
- Left-hand rail under “Favorites”
- There is also the option to Pin a post, but that is done by the admin for everyone, so this has a different purpose.
Conclusion:
The functionality to save a specific content item for later is available in most apps. I could not find it in Whiteboard, ToDo or Power Automate, and please let me know if I have missed anything.
Next to this personal action, there is often a group action where you can make something easily available for your team. This is usually called “Pinning” ๐
The nomenclature and imagery vary widely, and I would appreciate some more consistency. Personally, I tend to prefer “Save for later”. That is very clear, even more so than “Add to favourites”. We can then use the word “Pinning” for group actions, such as pinning a document to the top of a SharePoint library, a message to the top of a Yammer groep or a chat to the right of a Teams channel.
I also notice that the location where you can find your darlings varies widely too.
So, Microsoft, is this in the roadmap for a little more streamlining? ๐
And while we are on this topic, I would also like to be able to categorize or group things using my own words, when I have more than 10, for instance. I seem to remember you could do that with SharePoint sites in earlier SharePoint versions. (On-prem, perhaps) And I know that Forms will have Collections (check out Mike Tholfsens’s video) in the near future, but I am looking forward to be able to do that with other content.