SharePoint Online: “Anyone with the link” is Greyed Out!
Problem: “Anyone with the link” is greyed out in the SharePoint Online Share window!
How to Enable Anyone with the link option in SharePoint Online?
“Anyone with the link” is a sharing option in SharePoint Online that allows users to share files or folders with anyone who has the link, regardless of whether they have a SharePoint or Microsoft account. This option is useful for quickly and easily share files with external partners, customers, or other stakeholders. There are a few potential causes for the “Anyone with the link” option being greyed out in SharePoint Online. Here are a few solutions to try:
As a first step, we need to enable sharing with anonymous users at the tenant level. Here is how to enable external users with anonymous links in the SharePoint Online tenant:
- Login to Office 365 Admin Center >> SharePoint admin center (https://YOUR-TENANT-admin.sharepoint.com).
- Click on “Sharing” from the left navigation >> Move the slider to the top and set “Most permissive – Anyone – Users can share files and folders using links that don’t require sign-in.”
- Click “OK” to save your changes.
Enable Sharing Settings to “Anyone” for the Site Collection
Once the external sharing with anonymous access is enabled at the tenant level, we have to make sure it’s enabled at the site collection level, also.
- In the SharePoint admin center, click on “Sites” >> “Active sites” from the left navigation.
- Search and select the site where you want to set sharing policy.
- Click on the site name, and click on the “Policies” tab in the property pane, Click on “Edit” under “External Sharing”
- In the External sharing options, choose “Anyone” and click Save.
PnP PowerShell to Enable Guest Sharing for a Site Collection
You can use the below PowerShell script to enable external sharing to “Anyone”.
#Parameter
$SiteURL= "https://crescent.sharepoint.com/sites/marketing"
#Connect to PnP Online
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Credentials (Get-Credential)
#Set Sharing Settings to Enable Anonymous sharing
Set-PnPTenantSite -Url $SiteURL -Sharing ExternalUserAndGuestSharing
Make sure the “Limited-access user permission lockdown mode” Feature is disabled!
Once you enable the sharing settings to “Anyone” both at the tenant and the site collection level, the next thing to look at is: Disable “Limited-access user permission lockdown mode.”
- Go to Your site collection >> Click on Settings Gear >> Click on “Site Information” >> Click on the “View All Site Information” link.
- Under the site settings page, click on “Site Collection Features”.
- Click on the “Deactivate” button next to the “Limited-access user permission lockdown mode” feature and confirm the prompt on the next page.
This fix is applicable for OneDrive for Business as well.
In summary, “Anyone with the link” is a sharing option in SharePoint Online that allows users to share files or folders with anyone who has the link to anonymously access the resources. This option is useful for quickly and easily sharing files with external partners, customers, or other stakeholders. If it’s not enabled, check the sharing settings at the tenant and site collection. Also, check the said feature above.
I have all these settings configured and it doesn’t work. My personal account can create an anonymous link, but the account that runs our Power Apps flows cannot, even though our power apps service account is a site collection admin and also has Full Control permissions throughout the site.
Sites are being created with Sharing set to “Don’t allow sharing outside your organization” but the global setting is to Allow Anonymous sharing. I need to go into the Admin center and reset the value every time a new site is created. Any idea what is causing this and how I can change it?
The sites are being created through Power Automate REST API calls, using the Modern Team Site without Group template (STS#3)
hallo eric, were you able to fix this? we have a similar issue.