SharePoint Online: How to Share a File or Folder for Anonymous Access?

Requirement: Share a File or Folder Anonymously with external users in SharePoint Online.

Prerequisites: To enable anonymous access in SharePoint Online, ensure the external sharing policy is set to “Anyone” for the site, and the limited access lockdown policy feature is disabled under site collection features! Otherwise, You won’t get the “Anyone with the link” under sharing options. More here: “Anyone with the link” is missing in SharePoint Online?

How to share a File or Folder Anonymously in SharePoint Online?

When you share a file or folder anonymously, anyone with the link can access it without entering the user name and password. To share any file or folder anonymously, do the following:

1. Navigate to the document library where your file or the folder is saved, and select the file or folder.
2. Click on the “Share” button in the toolbar.
3. Click on the “Anyone with the link can view>” or “Anyone with the link can edit >” button in the share popup.
4. Choose sharing options such as Allow editing, expiration date, password, block download, etc., and click on apply.
5. Now, You can either copy the link to the clipboard or send it directly to Outlook email and share it with anyone.

This would help when you want to share a document with anyone anonymously, often with external users! Please note, only file or folder-level anonymous sharing is possible in SharePoint Online, and we can’t share an entire site or document library anonymously. Moreover, anonymous access must be enabled at both the tenant and site collection level by setting the external sharing policy, in order for anonymous users to access the content.