> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Org Explorer vs. OneDirectory: What’s the Real Difference? - URL: https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/org-explorer-in-microsoft-365-and-onedirectory/ - Published: 2025-03-06T08:33:58.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-17T12:10:41.000Z - Description: Microsoft Org Explorer is free, but is it enough? Dive into the crucial differences between Microsoft's built-in org chart viewer and OneDirectory's org chart software, see clearly where each tool excels. - Author: Greg Bennett - Tags: Microsoft 365 Every Microsoft 365 tenant already ships with a free org chart viewer. Microsoft calls it [Org Explorer](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/org-explorer-40c65909-b12d-4ab9-8d6c-a1592789dc8e?ref=onedirectory.com), and for one kind of question it is exactly enough. Org Explorer is Microsoft 365's built-in org chart viewer. It lives inside Outlook and Teams, reads reporting lines from Entra ID, and lets you browse a company's management chain one level at a time, at no extra cost. People do look. Across 65 customer organizations in our product analytics (16,267 active employees, 90 days to August 14, 2026), 32.4% of employees opened an org chart. A third of your company will use whatever chart you give them. **Org Explorer shows you the reporting line. It cannot answer the more expensive question: who actually knows how to do this.** Here is where each tool works, where each one stops, and the honest cases where you should not pay us anything. --- ## What Org Explorer Does Well ![Org Explorer in Microsoft 365 showing the built-in org chart view](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/2025/03/org-explorer.jpg) Microsoft 365 Org Chart View - **It's free and already deployed:** if you're on Microsoft 365, it's in Outlook and Teams today, with nothing to install and nothing to buy. - **Instant hierarchy checks:** who is this person's manager, who reports to them. One click, answered. - **“Works with” context:** it surfaces the colleagues someone frequently collaborates with, useful for basic context before a meeting. ### **Where it stops** - **One-dimensional navigation:** you crawl up or down the reporting line one click at a time. There is no jumping to a department, no path highlighting, no whole-company view. - **No dotted lines, no assistants:** Org Explorer draws solid reporting lines only. [Dotted-line relationships](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/dotted-lines-in-your-org-chart/) and [assistant roles](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/assistants-deserve-a-special-place-in-your-org-chart-and-directory/) are invisible. - **No export:** there is no download button. Try it. Getting a chart into a board deck means screenshots stitched together by hand. - **No customization:** no branding, no layout options. It's Microsoft blue or nothing. - **No integrated directory:** you cannot search by skill, department, or location. All you get is a basic profile card. **Bottom line:** Org Explorer is a viewer. It displays the hierarchy that already exists in Entra ID, and that is the whole job it does. --- ## OneDirectory: Built for Day-to-Day Use ![OneDirectory org chart software product screenshot](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/2025/06/OneDirectory-org-chart-software.png) OneDirectory Org Chart Software OneDirectory is org chart and [employee directory software](https://www.onedirectory.com/employee-directory?ref=onedirectory.com) for medium-to-large companies that rely on accurate, accessible employee data every day. ### **Where OneDirectory is different:** - **Interactive org charts:** navigate, zoom, and explore the entire structure. Highlight reporting paths, pick any starting point, and show dotted-line and assistant relationships. - **Search that covers the whole company:** find colleagues by name, skill, department, location, or custom attributes, with the directory and the chart integrated in one place. - **Export and share:** org charts export to PDF or PNG for presentations, planning, and reviews, with layout options you control. - **Rich employee profiles:** every employee gets a [visual profile](https://www.onedirectory.com/employee-profiles?ref=onedirectory.com) with photo, bio, skills, and custom fields. - **Office and department pages:** branded pages for each location and team, which matters most in distributed companies. - **Scale:** companies with thousands of employees navigate and search without performance problems. In deployments above 500 active users, our renewal rate runs above 80% as of August 2026. --- ## Org Explorer vs OneDirectory: Feature Comparison | **Capability** | **Microsoft Org Explorer** | **OneDirectory** | | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Price** | Included with Microsoft 365 | Paid, banded by company size | | **Chart navigation** | One reporting level at a time | Full interactive chart: zoom, jump to any team, highlight reporting paths | | **Dotted lines and assistants** | Not shown | Supported | | **Search** | Name lookup with a basic profile card | Name, skill, department, location, and custom fields | | **Export** | None | PDF and PNG | | **Layout and branding** | Fixed | Custom layouts and branding | | **Employee profiles** | Basic profile card | Photos, bios, skills, custom fields | | **Department and office pages** | None | Included | --- ## Who Should Use Which Tool? A quick guide to which tool fits your organization: | **Company Size** | **Microsoft Org Explorer** | **OneDirectory** | | -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Small (<100 employees)** | ✅ Great for simple checks, minimal needs. | ❌ Probably overkill, unless fully remote. | | **Medium (100–2,000)** | ❌ Quickly hits limits (search, skills, exports). | ✅ The fit we built for: search, exports, data-quality visibility. | | **Large (2,000+)** | ❌ Too basic for complex structures. | ✅ Purpose-built for scale and complex reporting lines. | --- ## The True Cost of Free Choosing Org Explorer because it's free looks like the smart financial move. The costs show up later, in time rather than license fees: - **Time:** finding anything beyond a direct manager means clicking through the hierarchy one level at a time, and rebuilding charts for decks means manual screenshot work every quarter. - **Hidden expertise:** with no skill or department search, the person who has solved your problem before stays invisible. - **Shadow spreadsheets:** teams that need a real directory build their own lists, which drift out of date the week they're made. - **First impressions:** a new hire's first view of your company is a basic profile card rather than a directory that shows them who does what, where. --- ## When Does OneDirectory Pay for Itself? - **Onboarding:** new hires get rich profiles and a clear structure from day one. - **Cross-functional work:** skill search shortens the path from “who knows this?” to an answer. - **Management and HR visibility:** exportable, customized org charts feed real planning and reviews. - **Data quality:** the directory makes gaps in employee data visible and quick to fix. That last point is measurable. Across the same 65 tenants, between first Microsoft 365 sync in January 2026 and August 2026, the manager field went from populated on 42% of profiles to 79%, and average profile completeness rose from 30.8% to 44.1%. [We published the full before-and-after numbers here](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/employee-directory-data-problem-is-fixable/). Two limitations belong next to those numbers. The cohort is self-selected: every organization in it had already decided its directory needed work. And the software cannot take the credit alone: every organization also ran its own cleanup over the same window, and the two effects cannot be separated. [Chesapeake Bank - Improving Onboarding and Collaboration with OneDirectoryChesapeake Bank’s decision to adopt OneDirectory has proven to be a resounding success. By addressing their challenges with an outdated employee directory system, they have not only streamlined their internal processes but also created a more engaging and efficient work environment.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/icon/VinewaveIcon-min-9.png)The OneDirectory BlogGreg Bennett![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/thumbnail/kilmarnock-branch-2.jpg)](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/chesapeake-bank-employee-directory/) [Mountain View Hospital - Improving Employee Profile DataBy selecting OneDirectory, Mountain View successfully consolidated employee profile data, reduced errors, and provided an effective and modern directory experience to all its employees.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/icon/VinewaveIcon-min-10.png)The OneDirectory BlogGreg Bennett![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/thumbnail/MountainViewHospital_UT.png)](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/mountain-view-hospital-employee-directory/) --- ## Questions Buyers Ask ### What is Org Explorer in Microsoft 365? Org Explorer is Microsoft 365's built-in org chart viewer. It lives inside Outlook and Teams, reads reporting lines from Entra ID, and lets you browse the management chain one level at a time. It ships with Microsoft 365 at no extra cost. ### Can you export an org chart from Org Explorer? No. Org Explorer has no export function. To get a chart into a slide deck you screenshot it piece by piece. OneDirectory exports full org charts to PDF and PNG. ### Does Org Explorer show dotted-line reporting or assistants? No. Org Explorer displays solid-line reporting only. Dotted-line relationships and assistant roles do not appear, which makes it unreliable for companies whose real structure includes them. ### What is the difference between Org Explorer and OneDirectory? Org Explorer is a viewer: it displays the reporting lines already in Entra ID. OneDirectory is org chart and employee directory software: company-wide search by skill and department, rich profiles, department pages, PDF and PNG exports, and visibility into the quality of the data itself. ### When is Org Explorer enough on its own? When your organization is small, the hierarchy is single-line, and nobody needs to search by skill or export a chart. If manager lookups inside Outlook cover your needs, keep Org Explorer and spend nothing. --- ## Final Thought: Feature vs. Platform **Org Explorer** is a feature inside Microsoft 365: a quick reference that works for minimal needs, at a price of zero. **OneDirectory** is org chart and employee directory software for companies where finding people, and trusting what you find, is daily infrastructure. - If a quick reference is enough, stick with Org Explorer. It costs nothing and does that job. - If your organization needs search, exports, real reporting structures, and data you can trust at scale, that is the job OneDirectory was built for. [Start your free trial of OneDirectory](https://www.onedirectory.com/org-chart?ref=onedirectory.com) and put your own tenant's data in front of you. ![Screenshots of OneDirectory employee directory and org chart software](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/2025/03/onedirectory-hero-screenshots-3.jpg) OneDirectory - Automated Org Chart & Employee Directory Software