Forum Discussion
Files shared with Anyone sometimes prompt users to request acccess to the file
My organization is having a similar issue. I work at a university in our online school. We use OneDrive to host all of our curriculum files and we exclusively use Anyone With the Link Can View links to link course files into our LMS. We are running about 300 courses and about 1000 individual course sections each year, with thousands of files shared from our OneDrive into those courses.
We are sporadically getting links that have been set as Anyone Can View prompting users to sign in or getting error messages as some others have stated already. Just last night I had a student submit an issue that a file was giving this error and it did for me as well. But when I got into the office this morning to troubleshoot further, the file link was working properly.
When I access the files through my LMS Administrator account (which has our institutional OneDrive linked to it), I can access the file no problem. But when I test in Incognito Mode or in another browser that does not have my credentials saved, I'm getting the request access or error message.
This is the first forum I have found that has discussed a similar issue.
- If you go into where the file is stored, and click the file then manage access on it, and see the anyone link, copy it, and check it vs. the link you have published, do they match?
StephenRice Our organization has the same problem (for several years) ! I've opened several tickets with Support with no help (other than asking me for fiddler logs when the issue happens). I've even shared Office and Azure audit logs with Support. Just like everyone else, 9 out of 10 will be able to access. the 10th person will be able to access after clicking on the link multiple times.
I've experienced the issue personally (member of IT) so double checked everything was set correctly (links shared vs what is under manage access). In my experience, when it didn't work after clicking on the link a couple of times, I clicked on the link in an incognito browser window and was able to access with no problem. Afterwards, no issues accessing with regular browser. No time to get fiddler logs as needed to collaborate in real time !
- StephenRice
Microsoft
Hi Lavan Jeeva,
Totally understand the frustration here (and largely feel the same way). We see reports on this occasionally but our ability to reproduce & determine the exact cause hasn't shown us any results. Fiddler traces are the most useful tool for us to help root cause this but obviously tough as it requires a certain amount of prescience to have Fiddler running before the one in a million glitch 😞 I do keep an eye on this thread in case anyone shares something that helps us break through here and do keep submitting support tickets in case that avenue turns up something as well. In the meantime, the team will keep looking for solutions here. Appreciate everyone's help in watching for this!
Stephen Rice
Senior Program Manager, OneDrive
ChrisWebbTech they do not in the files that I have just spot checked.
The links that have been generated to share in our LMS are significantly longer than the ones that I'm seeing in the Manage Access tab in OneDrive. Both get me to the file when I have my credentials logged in for OneDrive, but the long form one does not when I'm in incognito mode or another browser.
The links had previously worked without issue and now some are not.
When I go to regenerate a share link, it's now giving me much shorter links from both the browser lever and file explorer level access into our OneDrive. Was there an update sometime recently in how OneDrive generates share links? I'm not an IT person, I'm just the tech person for our instructional design team so I am a bit out of my depth.
