External Sharing With SharePoint Online

External Sharing With SharePoint Online

External Sharing with SharePoint Online 

At any given point in time, every organization needs to share its content with end-users, clients or partners, who are not a part of the organization.

So, What is External Sharing?

The External Sharing is a feature of SharePoint Online, through which users in your organization share content with users outside the organization such as partners, vendors, clients, or customers.  

Different Options to share content in SharePoint Online

Before configuring External Sharing settings first, you need to know the different options that are provided by SharePoint Online. You can choose any one of them, depending on your need and requirement.

1. Anyone

Through this option, you can share content using anonymous links that don’t require sign-in. Anyone who has the link can access the content i.e. view, edit and share with others. It’s recommended to not share any sensitive information with anonymous users because you don’t have a proper tracking of who is accessing what.  

2. New and Existing Guests

This options allows to share content with existing external users and, you can also share it with new external users. But they must sign in or provide verification code to access the content. Whenever you share content with them, they will receive an email invitation that contains a link where they need to sign in. Then, they’ll be added to your organization’s Azure Active Directory as a guest. If they don’t have work or school account, then they need to enter verification code every time and are not added to your Azure AD. 

3. Existing Guests

With this option, sharing content with new external users is not allowed. But the external users who already exist in your Azure AD by accepting sharing invitations can access the content. 

4. Only People In Your Organization

You cannot share content with external users with this option. If external users already have access to your content, then they will lose access to it. Only users within your organization have access to your data. To prevent external sharing completely, prefer this option. 

5. Configure External Sharing Settings

Choose this option to share content externally in SharePoint Online and One Drive for Business. You need to select one option from above and, along with it, you also need to configure some External Sharing settings at below levels so that your content is more secure. The levels are as follows-  

1. Organization level 
2. Individual Site level 
3. File or folder or item level 

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