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When sharing a sharepoint site with external users, i already know that users can use a Microsoft accounts, such as :-

  1. Hotmail account
  2. or if let say organization ABC123.com have office 365, then external users can access the external sharepoint site using their ABC123.com accounts.

but what if we share the sharepoint site with emails under yahoo, gmail doamins?? or with organization accounts which do hot have access to office 365? can we still share these sites with them?

Regards

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  • Recently, I get SharePoint Online job with following requirements: the site collection administrator needs to share documents with external users (out-of-organization); then I did Prove of Concept design some groups with lecture or collaboration permissions and everything works fine. Jul 5, 2021 at 23:33

3 Answers 3

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Yes you can share with users who have yahoo or gmail email addresses. If you require external sharing with authenticated external users then it requires a Microsoft account. If you share with yahoo or gmail, the users will be prompted to create a Microsoft account when the user accepts the sharing invitation.

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  • now i need to share my whole site with external users (by adding them to the Members group)... so will i be able to share the site with non-Microsoft accounts? or sharing with non-Microsoft accounts can only be done to share documents and not sharing the whole site?
    – John John
    Jul 9, 2018 at 20:47
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    You can share the entire site. There is no restriction as such. The user will have access depending on SharePoint group he is member of, or permissions assigned directly to that user. As long as you have external sharing enabled on the site collection, you should be able to invite users by directly adding them to the site and granting them necessary access.
    – sssreddy
    Jul 9, 2018 at 20:55
  • But my question is if i can share a whole site with a non-Microsoft account user such as [email protected] , and this user to access the whole site using his yahoo email address?
    – John John
    Jul 9, 2018 at 21:29
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    Yes you can share entire site.
    – sssreddy
    Jul 9, 2018 at 21:35
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    When you share with an non microsoft email address, the user has will be prompted to create a microsoft account using the same email address while accepting the sharing invitation. If you share with a MS account they can use the current account password to login, but if you share with yahoo email address they will have to create a password which inturn creates a MS account.
    – sssreddy
    Jul 12, 2018 at 15:35
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in that scenario you have two options:

  1. Sharing documents as a guest link does not required the sign in.
    "Share a document, but don’t require sign-in. Share a link to a non-sensitive or non-confidential document with people outside your organization so that they can either view it or update it with feedback. These people do not require ongoing access to content on your internal site."`

  2. But if you want share a site or need more trail who access the file / sites then you need to share it with sign in option.

    Share a document and require sign-in. Provide one or several people outside your organization with secure access to a specific document for review or collaboration, but these people do not require ongoing access to other content on your internal site.

Check this link

I have a Gmail account and when I went to the usual Microsoft Account Sign up page Gmail wasn't even an option (only hotmail, live, and outlook were available). I used this link https://signup.live.com and simply used my normal gmail account where an email address was asked for. After filling out the needed information everything ran smoothly. All I had to do was verify my email. Easy.

Manage sharing with external users in Office 365 Small Business

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  • thanks for your reply. now i need to share the whole site not just a document, so in this case i can not use guest link is this correct?
    – John John
    Jul 9, 2018 at 20:38
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    thats correct, guest link only for documents
    – Waqas Sarwar MVP
    Jul 9, 2018 at 20:39
  • now in my case i need to share a site (by adding external user to the default members group),,, so in this case the external user need to have Microsoft account (such as hotmail or outlook) or organization account where this organization should already have office 365 accounts.. is this correct?
    – John John
    Jul 9, 2018 at 20:41
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    that is correct or if user dont have then user can register his non-live/MSFT account to link to live.
    – Waqas Sarwar MVP
    Jul 9, 2018 at 20:43
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    they have to go this signup.live.com and then enter their email address (which ever it is i.e [email protected]), once complete the form then he will be able to access the site using his non-email address...above process make his own account as msft account.
    – Waqas Sarwar MVP
    Jul 9, 2018 at 20:53
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Yes, You can share with external users like yahoo and gmail etc. You need to enable this setting at SharePoint Admin center as well as Site Collection level.You can also set the expiration dates as well.

Refer : enter image description here

enter image description here

Very important : To be able to send anonymous link to gmail: Go to Sharing in Admin centre --> Under Additional Settings --> add gmail.com to the exception list

enter image description here

Cheers!

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  • thanks for the reply..but maybe i did not explain this in my original question,, is that i want to share the site with external users and not just documents.. so in this case will using anonymous access links allow me to share a site with external users?
    – John John
    Jul 9, 2018 at 20:43

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