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LukeSharepoint's avatar
LukeSharepoint
Copper Contributor
Sep 19, 2019
Solved

Word cannot open an anonymous link.

I can use the CSOM to generate an anonymous link, for example       string link = context.Web.CreateAnonymousLinkWithExpirationForDocument(documentUrl, ExternalSharingDocumentOpt...
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  • ChrisWebbTech's avatar
    ChrisWebbTech
    Sep 20, 2019
    This actually isn’t a bug. OneDrive / SharePoint just doesn’t support the use of office clients when using anonymous links. I believe the team is looking into adding this support at some point but you must use the office online web clients for anon links.
LukeSharepoint's avatar
LukeSharepoint
Copper Contributor
Sep 22, 2019

It's an undocumented, incomplete roll out of a feature. Someone stuffed up because literally 99.9% of users use the desktop apps. So why make a feature useful for 0.1% of users? Please fix Microsoft!!!

StephenRice's avatar
StephenRice
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Sep 23, 2019

Hi LukeSharepoint,

 

Chris is correct. The Office desktop apps don't currently support opening the anonymous/anyone links though this is certainly something we are looking at solving. I do want to note as well that once a signed in user has used the anonymous link, they are "redeemed" on it and should be able to open the document via the desktop apps. Hopefully that helps! Thanks!


Stephen Rice

Senior Program Manager, OneDrive

  • ChrisWebbTech's avatar
    ChrisWebbTech
    MVP
    Sep 23, 2019
    Assuming the right credentials are cached in the browser at the time, the woah's of MSA's! 🙂