Sharepoint Exteranl Users and Change in Access

Brass Contributor

We have a site collection we share with external users. The site collection has subsites each with specific permission groups. We send an invitation to the external user. Once the accept they accept the invitation, we add them to the permission groups. Most of our external users did not have a work Microsoft account, so prior to accepting the invitation they created a free account and access with those credentials. This has all been working wonderfully, however we are beginning to see some challenges. External users have name changes. Their company gives them a new email address and they want to use  that to access our site, however that is not their Microsoft account name. They want to discontinue their old Microsoft. account, however can't figure out how to do that. When we delete them from our environment and re-send the invitation to the new email address, they get their credentials crossed with their old Microsoft account and it becomes a mess. We also have some external users whose company are now O365 users and they wish to eliminate access to our site from their old free account and want to begin using their new work Microsoft account. This is a struggle in transitioning as well. We do not troubleshoot their Microsoft account so it becomes difficult to assist them in next steps.

 

I am looking for a guide, explanation or assistance in understanding the steps to assist external users:

  • Use a free Microsoft Account to access our site, however have a name change - what do they need to do with their free account to accommodate new email address and continue to access our site with new credentials?
  • External users who previously had a free Microsoft account may now have a work account because their company are now O365 users. How do we accommodate those changes with user access from the old, free account to the new work account?
3 Replies

@Annette1101are you using Azure AD B2B or just doing this within SPOnline?

I want to add to this as we are running into an issue where it seems a client has or had Office365 and how uses Google Docs. However, the problem we are running into is they do not know their O365 information since they have long transition, so they are not able to access documents we share as their domain seems to be tied to a defunct O365 tenant.  It would be great to have better insight on these situations and an option to bypass and force the new Code option.