Forum Discussion
Allowing External Users access to O365 SharePoint Site
All:
I need to allow access to an external user. I have taken the following steps:
1) Shared is enabled on the site collection: "Allow external users who accept sharing invitations and sign in as authenticated users" option is selected
2) Sent Share invitation to the user allowing contribute right.
User is receiving an error "user is not in directory".
What step or steps am I missing? Do I need to create a user profile for the external person?
Thanks in advance.
5 Replies
Mark, there could be several reasons for this behavior. Assuming that you sent the invite to some kind of external address (i.e. gmail.com), the user has to authenticate into your environment using Microsoft domain email address. In other words, if they try to login using same email address you shared with, it might fail, They have to login to your environment with any MSFT domain address like outlook.com or hotmail.com, live.com, etc. There could be other reasons. but this one is most likely. Also, check out this post, it provides detailed instructions on how to configure external sharing, see if you are missing a step.
Greg
Ha, I just completed a session on this at SPTechCon. Make sure that you've enabled external sharing at both the tenant and site collection level first.
My handout has more info. Try page 2, first bullet under "The Technology":
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f4gonujvysu79ef/AACrlCcSI7Y56QRnWO3ARZ0ja/Dec%208%20-%20Technical%20Sessions/Thurs_145_Getting%20the%20Most%20from%20External%20Sharing%20of%20Documents%20in%20SharePoint%20Online_Wade.pdf?dl=0
Is it a modern team site (i.e. a Group team site) or a classic team site?
Classic team site
Have you explicitly allowed external sharing both in SPO admin center and for that site collection?
