How to share read-only links to notebook pages if you have edit rights yourself?

[bunchofsage]

Hi there,

SCENARIO

we began introducing a new software within our organisation. Naturally a knowledge base emerged compiled by some key users. They created a OneNote notebook filled with helpful articles for common "how do I do xyz"-questions (it's pages sorted in sections). They know that those pages can be linked/shared by right-clicking and selecting "link to page".

PROBLEM

The problem was: the recipients (i.e. normal users) cannot open these links. The browser tells them they need to request access.

WHAT WE DID

1. we created a "anyone with the link can read"-link to the notebook. However, this only allows to enter through the notebook's "main entrance", e.g. the first page in the first section. The advantage of linking to specific pages giving specific answers is gone.
2. within sharepoint share settings we set access rights for most key users to read-only. We thought this would generate read-only links as well but in reality this also caused a "request access"-wall, because these links can also be viewed by specific, i.e. named, people

MY QUESTIONS

1. is there a way to generate read-only links to specific notebook pages while still having write-privileges yourself?
2. is there a way to turn existing share links (that were generated by write-privileged users) post-hoc into "readable for everyone within the organisation"-links?

SETUP

• organisation is running on Microsoft 365
• OneNote notebook is located within a MS Teams team for key users
• recipients of the share links are not part of the Teams team
• I will provide more info if necessary

Best,

Bunchofsage

[#2]

Those who are interested: we managed to no longer worry about "read-only" links but needed to send new links for those notebook pages.

HOW-TO

Here are the steps to do this:

1. create a new notebook in a channel of a team, where every employee is a member
2. open SharePoint share settings for this notebook and set everyone can read (i.e. remove everybody can write)
3. manually add specific people who can edit (e.g. those who contributed to this knowledge base notebook before, back when it was located within the smaller Teams team)
4. move the existing notebook content into that new notebook

CONSEQUENCES

With this we still have &action=edit in our links but it seems to cause no problem. OneNote automatically opens in read-only view for all users (=employees) except those with explicit edit privileges (set up in step 3).

Downside: As the old existing links still point to the old soon-to-be-deleted notebook we now have to re-link everywhere we posted page links before.