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I was reading this article about External users in SharePoint online:-

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/lystavlen/2013/04/14/understanding-external-users-in-sharepoint-online/

and the author mentioned the following limitation which external users will face inside sharepoint online:-

By default, external users cannot access the Search Center and will not be able to execute searches against “everything” (cross site collection search)

so i am not sure what is this limitation exactly, what is "Search Center and will not be able to execute searches against “everything"? For example let say i as the site admin, create a dash board page using Content Search web parts, where inside the Content Search web-part i will be querying items/documents from multiple site collections, so will the external user be able to view and access those dashboards and their results?

also let say I create a page and i added a Script Editor web part which contain some JavaScript code, to query some lists and libraries using the REST API. so will the external user be able to view the results of those API calls ? which might query cross-site data??

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The default search results page for team sites (osssearchresults.aspx) does not allow external users to see any results, to enable search for external users, we can enable external access to search center and share the search center to external users, then configure team site to use search center instead of default search results page.

The search has security trimming feature which the search results can only be viewed by users who have access to the items. In the content Search web part, the external users can view the results which a user shared the content to external users including other site collections which give access to external users.

Besides, you can add a sourceid of a result source you created to your REST seach api url to let external users to view the results.

Reference:

Searching for site content shared with external users

Office 365 SharePoint Search for External Users

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  • now i share the site with external user, and seems external user can use the default search button and view search results inside the /_layouts/15/osssearchresults.aspx ..
    – John John
    Mar 8, 2018 at 13:32
  • as in your answer you mentioned the following The default search results page for team sites (osssearchresults.aspx) does not allow external users to see any results, .. but based on my test the case is different...
    – John John
    Mar 8, 2018 at 13:34
  • now i try adding a script editor web part which contain some api calls to a list. and external users where able to access those web parts and view the api calls.. i even add the web part to another site collection and externla user was able to view the results...so seems external users are able to use api calls + use the osssearchresults.aspx search
    – John John
    Mar 8, 2018 at 17:19
  • can u please advice on my above comments ??
    – John John
    Mar 11, 2018 at 14:46

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