Onedrive Share with External Users: Best Practices and Options

Sharing files with external users can be a bit tricky, but with the right approach, it's a breeze. You can share files and folders with anyone, regardless of whether they have a OneDrive account or not.

To get started, you can invite external users to access your OneDrive files, and they can even edit them online. This is especially useful for collaborations.

External users can access shared files and folders for up to 30 days, unless you specify a different expiration date. This gives you flexibility in how long you want to share your files.

OneDrive also allows you to set permissions for external users, so you can control what they can do with your files.

For another approach, see: How to save Everything on Onedrive to External Hard Drive

To enable external sharing for your OneDrive for Business, you need to start by enabling external sharing for your tenant's parent site collection. This is a one-time setup that will allow you to control external sharing for all your site collections.

Broaden your view: Why Sharing Is Important

You can enable external sharing globally for your entire SharePoint Online tenant, which means no documents, sites, or site collections can be shared externally. Alternatively, you can turn external sharing on or off for individual site collections, providing more control over content security.

To enable external sharing for a specific site collection, go to the SharePoint admin center and sign in with an admin account. Under External sharing, specify your sharing level for SharePoint and OneDrive. The default level for both is Anyone.

Here are the different external sharing options available:

Once you've enabled external sharing, you can share your OneDrive files and folders with external users. You can share with anyone who has the link, even if they don't have a Microsoft account. To do this, go to your OneDrive and right-click on the file or folder, then click the share option and select "Anyone with the link."

Intriguing read: Onedrive Link

You can share OneDrive files and folders with external users in several ways, depending on your organization's settings. The most restrictive option is to share with specific people you choose, which is a more secure approach since the sharing link will only work for those you've invited.

You can also share with anyone with the link, but this option requires your organization to have external sharing enabled. This setting also allows users to share sites with new and existing guests who authenticate. If you select this setting, you can restrict the Anyone links so that they must expire within a specific number of days, or so that they can give only View permission.

To share with anyone with the link, go to your OneDrive and right-click on the file or folder and click the share option. Depending on your organization settings, the default option might be to share with anyone with the link. You can also set up an expiration date and a password for the file/folder to protect it.

You can choose from three options when sharing a file or folder: Can edit, Can review, and Can view. You can also set up an expiration date and a password for the file/folder.

Here are the external sharing options available in your organization:

If you select Anyone with the link, but the site or OneDrive is set to allow sharing only with guests who sign in or provide a verification code, the default link is Only people in your organization. Users need to change the link type to Specific people to share files and folders in the site or OneDrive externally.

Recommended read: Onedrive Share Link to Embed

You can share OneDrive files and folders with anyone, even without a Microsoft account. To do this, right-click on the file or folder and click the share option.

Depending on your organization settings, the default option might be to share with anyone with the link. If this option is greyed out, you need to configure your site collection's external sharing settings.

To share the file or folder with anyone without a Microsoft account, click the anyone option. This will allow users to view or access the shared files without needing a Microsoft account.

You can also configure external sharing settings in three options: Can edit, Can review, and Can view. This allows you to control what level of access the user has to the shared file or folder.

You can also set up an expiration date and a password for the file or folder. This helps protect your OneDrive folder/file, but keep in mind that users can still forward the link to others or send them the password.

Here are the external sharing settings options:

You can copy the link directly and share it with others through social media or text, but be aware that users can still share the link with others.

You can manage external users for a site collection using Office 365 Admin Center or PowerShell. The Get-SPOExternalUser cmdlet is used to get external users for a site collection.

To manage external users, navigate to the Office 365 admin center, go to EXTERNAL SHARING -> Sites, select your required site collection, and click Manage external users for this site. This will give you a list of 50 external users for the specific site collection.

You can also use the anyone with the link option to share OneDrive files and folders with external users. This option is available in the share settings and allows you to configure external sharing settings in three options: Can edit, Can review, and Can view.

Take a look at this: Onedrive vs File Sharing Windows 10 File Explorer

You can get external users in your tenant using two methods: Office 365 Admin Center and PowerShell.

To get external users using Office 365 Admin Center, navigate to EXTERNAL SHARING -> External Users. This will list all external users in your tenant.

You can also use the Get-SPOExternalUser cmdlet in PowerShell to get all external users in your SharePoint Online tenant.

This method returns a list of 50 external users in the SharePoint Online tenant.

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You can get the external users for each site collection, either using Office 365 Admin Center or PowerShell.

To use the Office 365 Admin Center, navigate to EXTERNAL SHARING -> Sites, select your required site collection, and click Manage external users for this site.

Using PowerShell is another option, where you can use the Get-SPOExternalUser cmdlet to get external users for a site collection.

This cmdlet returns a list of external users for the specific site collection, just like when you use it to get all external users in the tenant.

You can use this list to manage external users for each site collection, ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive information.

Here's a quick rundown of the steps to get external users for a site collection using PowerShell:

To disable external sharing for OneDrive for Business, you need to enable external sharing for the parent site collection first. This is a requirement to proceed with disabling external sharing for a specific user.

A different take: Onedrive Secure File Sharing

You can do this by going to the parent site collection URL, which is https://tenantname-my.sharepoint.com. If external sharing is already disabled, you'll need to enable it before moving forward.

To disable external sharing for a specific OneDrive for Business user, you can use the Set-SPOSite –SharingCapability command in PowerShell. This will disable external sharing for that user.

Here are the steps to follow:

Note that if external sharing is disabled for the parent site collection, you won't be able to enable it for a specific user. This is because the parent site collection has a more restrictive setting than the user's OneDrive for Business.

On a similar theme: How to Give Access to Onedrive to Another User

If you want to share files or folders with someone who doesn't have a Microsoft account, you can still do so with OneDrive.

The recipient won't need a Microsoft account to access the content, as OneDrive sends a one-time passcode to their email address to verify their identity.

This passcode is required to open the file, and once entered, the content is secured.

The link won't work if it's forwarded to others, as it's only valid for the person you specified when sharing.

However, you can still configure external sharing settings to allow anyone with the link to access the content, or you can specify who receives the sharing link.

If you choose to allow anyone with the link, the recipient can forward the link to others, and anyone who receives it will be able to view and access the content.

To stop sharing and remove access to your files, you can select the file, then select Details > Manage access to stop sharing.

For added security, you can also remove editing permission and turn on Block download in Link settings.

If you want to specify who receives the sharing link, you can select the Specific people option in Link settings, and the recipients will need a Microsoft account to access the content.

A fresh viewpoint: Stopping Onedrive