Forum Discussion
Sharing a Folder Externally from a SharePoint Site
So I have a requirement to share individual "Project Folders" from a Project Document Library. It seems that you can't Externally Share just the Folder and the extenal user needs access to the Site as well? Is this correct?
Experience is:
1. Select the Folder, Click Share >Specific People.
2. External User get the link and opens it
3. Signs in with MS Account
4. Access Denied (because they do not have access to the site)
Anyone else had this experience and is this expeceted behaviour?
14 Replies
Hi Daniel,
Check to see if the site collection feature 'Limited-access user permission lockdown mode' is activated. This feature is automaticall activated when the site collection feature 'SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure' is activated. See if deactivating this feature will solve the problem. I am assuming people are following a link directly to the folder and they see no content.
I hope this helps,
GregDeleted, StephenRice, Salvatore Biscari - Do you think my suggestion to check 'Limited-access user permission lockdown mode' qualifies as a best response? My response and subsequent follow up was accurate and allowed Daniel to share a folder with external users. If one of you agrees that this was the best response, I would appreciate getting a 'best response' added to my profile. Thanks - Greg
FYI, only the starter of the thread can mark an answer as best response...
Gregory Frick, thanks for that. It seems to be that when I deactivate the 'Limited-access user permission lockdown mode' I can access the folder without the need to grant the user access to the entire site.
StephenRice and Salvatore Biscari is this what should be expected?
Deleted
Gregory Frickis correct (I liked his answer as requested... :-)) )
For more context see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3039997/users-can-t-access-a-shared-folder-in-sharepoint-online
cc StephenRice
You can definitely share a single folder with an external user, and it should work (provided that both the tenant and the site collection allow external sharing). So, in your case there is something going wrong...
In my experience, most of the times this kind of problems comes from external users accepting the invite with an account different from the one they subsequently want to use to access.
Can you confirm that the exyternal user account is correctly listed in the folder permissions?
Does that user perhaps have an O365 business account having the same username (i.e. email) of the MSA?
Yeah external account is all OK. The problem is that it seems that SharePoint is not allowing them access to the folder becuase they don't have access to the site?
So when the user gets the access denied message and requests access. The Access Request sits at the Site Collection level and you need to grant the user access.
This is not what is desired. I don't want them to access the Site Collection ONLY the Folder.....
Thoughts?
StephenRicecan surely help...
