How to Check External Sharing in SharePoint Online? From Beginning to End

Overview: Do you want to protect sensitive information on SharePoint sites from external users? If so, then you’ve found the correct article. In this article, we will discuss how to check external sharing in SharePoint Online. Additionally, also find out the report of all the permitted external users.

According to the current collaborative work environment, businesses are mostly required to share content with external users. These include partners, vendors, and clients. SharePoint Online, a widely used collaborative and document management application offers the option of external sharing. However, this in-demand feature comes with the responsibility of ensuring that the shared content is highly secured.

So, to cross-check the data security you need to extract the SharePoint Online external sharing report using PowerShell. But before delving directly into the solution, let’s start from scratch.

What is External Sharing in SharePoint Online and its Importance?

External sharing in SharePoint Online allows users to share folders, files, and complete sites with people outside the organization. External sharing is controlled at an organization or site level.

The SharePoint administrator can give control of the overall tenant or particular sites as per necessity. This feature helps organizations collaborate with their partners and clients. Let’s take a look at the benefits of enabling external sharing in detail.

1. When the clients or people outside of the organization collaborate on the same project. There is a transparency of the project status. The client can monitor the progress of the project easily.
2. After enabling the external sharing the clients can track the latest updated status of the project or also monitor the recent changes using the version control option in SharePoint.
3. SharePoint administrator can restrict the external users and allow the permissions to access the data that is required.
4. The progress of the project is improved after external users start collaborating on the project. It minimizes the cost of resources and tools.

How to Enable External Sharing in SharePoint Online?

By default, SharePoint external sharing is enabled and it can be modified as per the requirement. But you must be a SharePoint administrator to modify the sharing settings. After logging in to the SharePoint admin center, go to the Active Sites > Site > Settings > More sharing settings.

Now choose the option among Anyone, New and Existing Guests, Existing guests only, and Only people in your organization that suits you the best.

How to Check External Sharing in SharePoint Online?

You can check the sharing at the organizational or site level. So, let’s start sequentially.

1.  Check File and Folder Level External Sharing

If the particular file or folder is shared with the external user, you can check it through the steps below.

1. Select the file or folder.
2. Press the right-click and choose the Manage Access option.
3. Now, check the external user who has permission to access it

2. Check Tenant or Organizational Level External Sharing

After logging in as a SharePoint administrator, you can control the settings globally.

• Step 1. Open M365 Admin Center > SharePoint Admin Center.
• Step 2. Go to Policies > Sharing.
• Step 3. Now, you can modify the Sharing settings for the SharePoint and OneDrive
• Step 4. You can choose the options: Anyone, New and Existing guests, Existing guests, and only people in your organization.

3. Check Site-Level External Sharing and Generate Report

After permitting the organizational-level sharing settings, You can also apply the site-level external sharing settings.

• Step 1. Launch the SharePoint Admin Center.
• Step 2. Click on Gear Icon > Site usage.
• Step 3. Scroll down and see the shared with external users section.
  Here you can view all the files and folders that are shared with external users.
• Step 4. Now, hit the Run Report option.
• Step 5. Choose the Destination location to save the resulting file and Save.
• Step 6. Now, you can open the report and find the external users from the User column.

Through the above steps, you can find the files and folders on a site shared with external users. But there might be the possibility, that the SharePoint administrator shared the whole site to the external user. So, how to check external sharing in SharePoint Online of a site? Let’s find.

How to Check External Sharing in SharePoint Online of a Complete Site?

1. Open the Site Settings.
2. Then hit the Site Permissions.
3. Check out the Site member’s details.

This might occur when the SharePoint site is a part of the Microsoft 365 group. Now, ensure that this group is accessible to external users. If found, then it is externally shared.

How to Extract SharePoint Online External Sharing Report Using PowerShell?

Execute the below commands sequentially to generate the SharePoint external users report.

Connect-SPOService -Url https://-admin.sharepoint.com

Get-SPOSite -Detailed |Where-Object {$_.SharingCapability -ne "Disabled"}|select Url,SharingCapability

These commands will show you the list of sites along with the access of the external users.

Extract SharePoint Online External Sharing Report  – Errors & Solutions

1. Error – The term ‘Get-SPOSite’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet

This is because of not installing or not updating the SharePoint Online PowerShell module.

Solutions: –

Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell

Update-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell

2. Error – Add-SPOUser: The specified user could not be found

This is because you added a new external user to the SharePoint Online site that does not have permission to add new guests.

Solution:-

Set-SPOSite -Identity -SharingCapability ExternalUserSharingOnly

Using the above approaches, you can check the external sharing in SharePoint Online. However, it is crucial to store the SharePoint data on another tenant to maintain data integrity and security. You cannot trust external users blindly, because there might be the possibility of mistakes either intentional or unintentional.

So, you can use the Most Reliable SharePoint to SharePoint Migration Tool to migrate your data to another SharePoint tenant.

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This tool is highly efficient in performing SharePoint tenant to tenant migration. You can simply execute this tool without knowing its technicalities.

Conclusion

No doubt, external sharing in SharePoint Online is a splendid feature. It enables seamless and transparent collaboration. However, it requires some measures that you should take to prevent data security. So, you can use the above-suggested methods such as the admin center and PowerShell to check the external users that are accessing the SharePoint files and folders. In addition, a professional tool is also advised to use for storing all of the data to another account for future use in any case of data loss. Hence the query on how to check external sharing in SharePoint Online is resolved.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is external sharing in SharePoint Online?

 A – It helps to improve the collaboration with the people outside of the organization.

Q2. What are the different potential issues of enabling external sharing?

A – External sharing of files and folders consists of various risks such as data breaches and compliance violations.

Q3. How can I check that a particular file is shared externally?

A – To check the file’s external access, select the file and click on the Manage Access option. Now, you can view the external user who has access to the file.

Q4. How to audit SharePoint Site to know the activities of external users?

A – Yes, you can by accessing the audit log reports.