Forum Discussion
External Sharing
I have a project site which I want to share with some external user. External Sharing is enabled in site collection level and the new setting "External users must accept sharing invitations using the...
I have encountered the same issue but with a small twist. I send the sharing invitation to a user's email, that user doesnt' have a MS account so it forces them to create one. Once the account is created they are taken directly to the shared FOLDER. However, if the user goes back to the sharing invitation and clicks the link they no longer have access to the folder. The only way to grant them access again is to resend the invitation, then it will work over and over. But why do I need to send it twice after the account has been made? This makes no sense since the MS account that was created is using the same email address the invite was orginially sent to? Were you able to figure your situation out? Maybe if you found anything it would help me.
The first sharing invitation for external users is a special one-time use link. It allows the user to associate the invitation with any user account they wish (unless the Office 365 Tenant is configured to require the email addresses match).
I think that second link that you are sending isn't the special one time use, it's merely a link to the document since that user account already has access to the file.
That would explain the behavior you're seeing.
I can't believe how convoluted this is. Clients and consultants are going to be very unhappy with us if they can't just see the file when they click the link.
I just want to send files with "View Only" priviliges like with Google Drive.
They should be able to click the link and view the file and download it if they want. They are not going to want to log in to anything just to see the file/folder.
Is there any way around this?
If I understand correctly what you want, you could use a read-only anonymous link: no invite, no need to authenticate, immediate access.
Be aware that, of course, an anonymous link, not requiring authentication, can be forwarded by the recipient to anybody else.
- Salvatore: That is exactly what I am looking for. Personnally I think the security aspect is overrated since someone could just download the file and send it out anyway - at least this way we could kill the link if we ever wanted to (at least I assume you can kill the link like with Google Drive).
If you don't want to require login then don't. You can send a guest link that they can use to view individual documents on your site anonymously (unless that's disabled in the collection/tenant).
