How to choose the right external sharing setting for your SharePoint site

 

How to choose the right external sharing setting for your SharePoint site

When you create a SharePoint site, you need to decide whether to allow external sharing. External sharing allows you to share your site with people outside your organization.

There are three external sharing settings available:

• Anyone: This setting allows anyone to view the site, regardless of whether they are a member of your organization.
• New and existing guests: This setting allows you to share the site with people outside your organization. These people will need to sign in and will be added to the directory.
• Existing guests only: This setting allows you to share the site with only people who are already in your directory. These users may exist in your directory because they previously accepted sharing invitations or because they were manually added.

The setting you choose will depend on your specific needs. If you want to share your site with as many people as possible, you can choose the Anyone setting. However, this setting does make your site more vulnerable to security risks. If you only want to share your site with people you trust, you can choose the New and existing guests or Existing guests only setting.

In addition to the external sharing setting, you can also choose to limit sharing by domain. This means that you can only share the site with people from certain domains. To do this, select the Limit sharing by domain check box and enter the domains that you want to allow or block.

You can also choose to change the guest access expiration setting for the site. This means that you can specify how long guests will have access to the site after they first access it. To do this, enter the number of days in the Guest access expiration box.

The default external sharing setting for each site type is also shown in the table below.

Site type	Default external sharing setting
Classic	Only people in your organization
OneDrive	Anyone
Group-connected sites (including Teams)	New and existing guests if the Microsoft 365 Groups setting Let group owners add people outside the organization to groups is On; otherwise Existing guests only
Communication	Only people in your organization
Modern sites with no group (#STS3 TeamSite)	Only people in your organization

To change the external sharing setting for a site, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Active sites page in the SharePoint admin center.
2. In the left column, select the site that you want to change the sharing settings for.
3. On the Settings tab, select More sharing settings.
4. In the External sharing section, select the desired sharing option.
5. If you want to limit sharing by domain, select the Limit sharing by domain check box.
6. In the Allowed domains box, enter the domains that you want to allow to view the site.
7. In the Blocked domains box, enter the domains that you want to block from viewing the site.
8. If you want to change the guest access expiration setting for the site, enter the number of days in the Guest access expiration box.
9. Click Save.

By following these steps, you can change the external sharing setting for a SharePoint site.

Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing an external sharing setting:

• Only change the external sharing setting for sites that you need to share with people outside of your organization.
• Be careful about who you share sites with. Only share sites with people you trust.
• If you change the external sharing setting for a site, you may need to update the links that you have shared with people.