Forum Discussion
External Sharing
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 need to kill the ability for an external user to open a file they have downloaded, you will need to use Azure Information Protection- which provides this functionality and much more.
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).
