My company occasionally has to provide share folders with external partners not using O-365. The sharing model works very cleanly. BUT --- external accounts, when connected to a library folder, do not get results from search - even when the content is in the folder tree to which they have access.
Does anyone know why this is? Is there a site setting that allows external parties to use search when connected to our site library folders?
Although I didn't get an answer as to why shared folders are not searchable, I did get a solution from MSFT. And - my team found that even the level of access they suggested wasn't necessary.
To allow for library content to be searchable, you need to provide access to the whole library. Not just the folder. MSFT's solution was to provide site level access to the user, and the user needed to have a MSFT account. This is not true - the need for a MSFT account is not accurate.
So - for those who need to share content with external partners and have that content searchable, you should set up a dedicated library for that partner (assuming the content is only to be viewed by the one group) and grant access to that library.
