SOLVED

SharePoint site available to everyone

Brass Contributor

We want to create a SharePoint site that is available to everyone, without having to have an MS account or logging on, or sending an invitation to. As long as they have the link, they can access the site. We have SharePoint online and the Sharing setting is et to "anyone", however when someone outside our organization clicks the link, they need to ask permission to access. Does the "anyone" setting still require an invitation to be sent to the person, and/or the person have a Microsoft account?

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best response confirmed by Paul Hunt - Cimares (MVP)
Solution

This article gives you all the info on sharing https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/collaborate-in-site?view=o365-worldwide

Note this section >>
"Note that the site cannot be shared with unauthenticated people (Anyone setting), but individual files and folders can."


Thanks for the link. If I am understanding correctly, after checking all the settings in Azure, M365 Admin, SharePoint Admin and site sharing, even though everything is set to "everyone", only authenticated guests can access? So, they must be invited to their email address to be able to gain access. So, if they were given the URL via a website or email, they would not be able to access as they have to authenticate from the invitation. Is that correct?
Yep, SharePoint isn't designed for anonymous site access, the original SharePoint Public site capabilities were removed from Online a long time ago.

As the Microsoft Docs that Tanya linked you to say, You can share individual items such as documents and files anonymously with the relevant sharing permission, but not an entire site. For site access, users must be invited using the B2B sharing capabilities (e.g. they must be invited by e-mail.)

There are options to deliver static content from Azure, but these would require some development capabilities.
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Paul Hunt - Cimares (MVP)
Solution

This article gives you all the info on sharing https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/collaborate-in-site?view=o365-worldwide

Note this section >>
"Note that the site cannot be shared with unauthenticated people (Anyone setting), but individual files and folders can."


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