SharePoint Online share feature won't auto-complete Groups

Question

The scenario is a SharePoint Online SP Team Site. The Libraries have permissions to match those that are usually involved but periodically a single document is required to be shared with a large number of people. These "others" are known to the system in SharePoint Groups. Sharing to the "others" can be done using the info panel ("i" \ Grant Access \ choose the groups ... ) BUT the more usual file share option will not auto-complete the Group name.

Any tips on making that work?

Any other methods for sharing to a large number of people who don't otherwise have access? Typing the names in automatically is very time consuming.

We used to be able to paste in a list of email addresses separated by ; as a workaround but this has recently stopped working on Office 365.

I will paste an image of the share method that won't auto-complete.

Thanks

Julian

stephenrice · Answer

Hi all,
&nbsp;
VasilMichev is correct. Clicking "Share" (or copy link) indicates that you want to to send a link to the file to some e-mailable object (and to some object that we can add to the permissions). SharePoint groups are not e-mailable so we exclude them from the results there.
&nbsp;
That being said, we certainly know that users want to be able to do this! If you open up the details pane and click on the "add People" button. That should bring up the "Grant Access" dialgoue (freshly re-done!) which fills the same role as the classic "Invite People" dialogue. You should be able to share with SharePoint groups here. If not, please let me know!
&nbsp;
Stephen Rice
OneDrive Program Manager II

vasilmichev · Answer

Seems to work fine here, I get results for either the Display Name of the Group/Team or the primary SMTP address. It seems to work too good even, as it surfaces some hidden/system mailboxes :)

julian orange · Answer

Thanks Vasil,&nbsp;That is promising and led me to have a closer look.&nbsp; The groups types I was using that do not auto-complete in SharePoint's primary share screens are;"SharePoint Groups"&nbsp;at the site collection leveland "Office 365 security groups".&nbsp;&nbsp;Synchronized AD security groupsOffice 365 distrubution listsThe following types of groups do auto-complete in the primary sharing screens of SharepointOffice 365 Groups&nbsp;Office 365 Mail enabled security groupsI'm not sure why this is inconsistent or whether it is configurable but I have a way forward by choosing the type that works.&nbsp; For the types that work only via&nbsp; information panel \ manage access there are differences too - in whether the person is notified of the share or not.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ThanksJulian

vasilmichev · Answer

That's the expected behavior, SharePoint's sharing functionality requires both email (to send the invite) and security-enabled object (so that permissions can be stamped on it), thus it only works with mail-enabled security groups and now Office 365 Groups.

anders eriksson · Answer

The strange thing is that it used to work and suddenly stopped, at least for us and our customers tenants. I could previously get autocomplete for Office 365 groups when sharing from SharePoint but not anymore.

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SharePoint Online share feature won't auto-complete Groups

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