How to share a SharePoint site with external users

In this SharePoint tutorial, we will discuss how to share a SharePoint site with external users and what are the ways to share SharePoint sites with external users.

How to share a SharePoint site with external users

Let us now see how to share a SharePoint Online site with external users.

To share a site with external users, we need to do changes at the below two places.

1. Enable External Sharing at the Office 365 Tenant Level
2. Enable External Sharing at the SharePoint Site Level

Enable External Sharing at Tenant Level

Initially, make sure your external sharing is Enabled in the SharePoint online admin center.

SharePoint online Admin center external sharing settings:

1. Login to Microsoft Office365 using your SharePoint credentials -> Select Office365 App Launcher and then click on the Admin.

1. Select Show all options and then you can able to see the SharePoint option under Admin centers. Select the option SharePoint.

1. Under Policies, click on the option Sharing.

• You can also select the sort of link that is selected by the user’s default to share folders and files in one drive or SharePoint.
• You can also choose the permission that is selected by default for sharing links for the external user, as shown below:

This is how we can enable external sharing at the tenant level.

Read How to change a SharePoint site from private to public

Enable External Sharing at SharePoint Site Level

Now, let us see how to enable external sharing at the SharePoint site level. Basically, we need to enable external sharing setting at the particular site.

1. Select Office365 App Launcher and then click on the Admin.
2. Select Show all options and then you can able to see the SharePoint option under Admin centers. Select the option SharePoint.
3. Under Sites, option-> click on the Active sites to view all the active sites.

1. Select the site for which you want to share with the External user, and click on the Sharing icon.

Here you can choose from the below options:

• Anyone: If you choose this option, then anyone with the link can access the site (files and folders, etc) without sign-in.
• New and existing guests: If you choose this option, then both new and existing guests can access the site contents by sign in or by providing a code.
• Existing guests only: If you choose existing guests only, then your organization’s existing guests only can access the content.
• Only people in your organization: In this case, there will not be any external sharing for the site. The site only be accessible within your internal users.

Here choose New and existing guests and click on Save.

This is how to share a SharePoint site with external users at the SharePoint site level.

How to remove external users from a SharePoint site

To remove external users from the SharePoint site, from the above screenshot, choose the option as Only people in your organization and then click on the Save button.

Related SharePoint tutorials:

• SharePoint site collection administrator
• Your organization’s policies don’t allow you to share with these users. Go to external sharing in the office 365 admin center to enable it.
• SharePoint Site Collection – Change Title, Description, Logo, and Site Administrator
• Connect-SPOService : Current site is not a tenant administration site error in SharePoint Online Office 365 Site
• Cannot contact web site or the web site does not support sharepoint online credentials
• Create site page in SharePoint online

In this SharePoint Online tutorial, we learned how to enable external sharing for a SharePoint site. We saw the steps, how to enable external sharing at the tenant level as well as in the SharePoint site level.