At Ignite we announced a major improvement to the way secure external sharing of files and folders works in both OneDrive and SharePoint in Office 365 and we wanted to share what this means for users...
Updated Jun 25, 2020
Version 4.0
Blog Post
This change is extremely frustrating as outlined by many comments on this blog. The fault it is causing for our users is this.
- Share a word file with an external user not yet registered in AAD
- They can view and edit in Word Online with the new method (emailed link + verification pin)
- They cannot edit in Word 2016 on the desktop
- They never get registered (as intended by the new design)
So for new external users we must perform something similar to this (assuming they already failed as outlined above).
- Have them clear the cookies from the browser
- Share a SITE with the person (using an empty site specifically for this purpose)
- Let them login the old way using an associated Microsoft account and thus being registered into AAD
- Re-share the file that we actually intend them to edit
- Now it allows editing in full word as it did in the past
This causes the external person to contact the sharer who will contact IT for support. The process is very confusing and results in more failure and more contact required than before.
I hope this new method can become an option that we can opt out of - and quickly!