Forum Discussion
Files shared with Anyone sometimes prompt users to request acccess to the file
I've had this happen a few times. It's all internal, people within our organization. The link is to a file directly but it has also happened to a shared folder in OneDrive.
The complication is if it is sent to 10 people it may for for 9 of them. There is no consistency when it works or who it works for.
We are not multi-geo. All within the Greater Toronto Area but working from home during quarantine.
MicrosoftThanks for confirming thatashgirl!
We are still investigating this one internally. Thanks!
Stephen Rice
Senior Program Manager, OneDrive
Add me to the list with the problem. The recipient of the link uses an iPad. This has worked for me in the past but not anymore. The shared folder is in another shared folder (called "Shared") and anything in that folder should be shared implicitly but even trying to share the subfolder results in a request for credentials. I find it hard to believe that it cannot be reproduced since lots of us have links that show the problem.
StephenRice is there any update on this problem?
I have found that it happens more often with Safari on iPhone and Mac.
Please just make shared links work.
- Yeah. We've determined it's a bug awhile back, the problem is they can't figure it out :). Hence them trying to get or somehow find a way to reproduce it which seems fairly impossible based on how random it seems to be. How many resources or what not has gone to this is anyone's guess, but def. a bug.
But besides the bug the other suggestions have been related to other scenarios that don't have to do with the bug and are other issues not related that get jumbled into this same thread, hence our discussion about the misunderstanding on the statement on how it was shared cause that would def. introduce a different issue that is a UX problem but not a bug, but we've determined that wasn't the case based on our clarifications :).
The original issue is most def. a bug that I'm sure haunts the SharePoint sharing team. - Thank you - I think PhilippeA is correct that this is a bug that has never been addressed, and I like your tip about having users try the link a second time. I'm just going to add that to my emails when I send a link around. Hoping it helps. Ridiculous that MS can't resolve the bug (but I'm no software engineer, so what do I know).
I'm not nervous at all... ;-
And it was not an opinion, it was a diagnostic !"all the "pseudo-smarties" here around that come up with explanations or suggest that it might be due to this or that setting, are just wrong..."
Maybe switch to decaf?this discussion is basically pretty useless... it is 100% obvious that this is a BUG !! (I spent 20+ years developing system-level software, so yes, I know what I'm talking about).
I've crossed so many people having this issue, and have done so many tests myself, that there's absolutely nothing to discuss, and all the "pseudo-smarties" here around that come up with explanations or suggest that it might be due to this or that setting, are just wrong... there is a bug in MS' code, and as long as no one from MS gets to reach one of the people who really develop this (i.e. those who have written the code, or those who maintain it), there is ZERO chance for improvement !
Kristin_Lund Our approach is the same as you and we still sometimes have issues (same experience as you). We've seen this with users who are already authenticated in their browser and those that aren't. If the user goes back and clicks on the link again they will have access....without any change by the person who originally created the sharing link.
- Yes, apologies - I was unclear. My approach has been to click on "share," then copy the link after making sure it's set to "anyone can edit." Then I send an email with the link to the people who will be reviewing the document. So they should have access without having to request access. But I'm sorry, I was definitely not spelling it out right in my earlier message.
- But when you say “ We share a file with a group of people, we give them permission to edit ” that doesn’t exactly give off using anonymous links ;). If using anyone links then most definitely shouldn’t be asking to login!
- Thank you but I agree with PhilippeA below - I send the link by email to a number of recipients, so their logins shouldn't matter. And sometimes it works (the user can access the file without having to request access), sometimes it doesn't. Pretty random.
- Don’t really agree… that’s exactly the problem… when I say « anyone with the link », I don’t expect any prompting whatsoever, and this is precisely what doesn’t work reliably… this is definitely about a big, not a user-related problem.
- Sounds like a different issue to me in your case, they are probably logged into different Microsoft accounts than that ones invited, thus this will happen. I tend to utilize "anyone with this link" + a password if it's somewhat sensitive when dealing with external people due to this problem.
StephenRice Has any progress been made on this issue? I'm not a tech person, just a member of the comms team, and we are having the same problem: We share a file with a group of people, we give them permission to edit (before copying the link to share), and then they end up having to request access. Very frustrating. It's March 2022... has been going on for years, now. Has anyone solved the bug?
Just adding to the thread that we've been experiencing this issue as well. I have no idea how widespread it is, I just know that I often send out links to internal users and every so often I see a request to access the file, even though I have setting to allow anyone to view/edit with the link.
I don't believe any file I have ever shared outside the organization has ever come back with a request for access.
- forget this comment...I tried larger files than the one with the error and the link worked, so the process of elimination discredits the aforementioned theory...however, trial and error has shown that sharing the problematic file simultaneously with another file, as plain as a .txt, makes the problematic link work. Strangely.
Hi, I recently encountered this issue and realized that it happens when sharing large files. StephenRice
- Same here... sharing a link ('everyone with the link has access', without edit rights), and one of x users gets prompted...
When I sign out, I can access the link without issue on Mac and W7.
I strongly doubt this can't be reproduced... and the problem is not to trace what happens in detail, the point is to check in the code under which circumstances the user gets prompted when the owner has set the 'everyone with the link has access' flag... there must be some branch that (erroneously) makes this possible... This issue has come up today for a user we support as well. She said just recently for files she shares the users get asked to request permission. I checked the Sharepoint admin settings and the default is "anyone with link" and settings are set for "most permissive." As far as I know she's the only one out of about 30 or so people experiencing this issue, but I'll keep my eyes open for more. Anyway, the SP settings haven't changed for this organization recently so I don't know why this suddenly started happening for this user.
To add my experience with this: I've started experiencing exactly the problem the OP is describing a few months ago.
I'll create a link to an Office-document stored on Onedrive with permission "Anyone with the link can edit" and share that within my organisation. About half of the time (I haven't been able to figure out a pattern, which makes it very difficult to reproduce) the user trying to open it (by clicking the link in a Teams-chat for example) will not have access and I'll receive an email asking me to grant access to the user. Once I've done so the receiver can open the document again fine.
I've been in touch with my internal IT-support and it seems like I'm the only person within the organisation that this is happening to. I've reinstalled my Windows-installation from scratch but that did not alleviate the problem.
- StephenRice
Hi mwhiting,
Unfortunately our investigation hasn't yielded a specific issue. We have a fix in-progress for a multi-geo issue that we hoped might be related but given that a few folks have reported this without multi-geo, I'm not sure if it will end up having the desired impact.
If you are still seeing this and can get me the details I mentioned above, it will certainly help!
Stephen Rice
Senior Program Manager, OneDrive
