How do I share a file on SharePoint online with external users?

As a great data collaboration system and file management tool, SharePoint has been used in daily work and life. With core features in SharePoint, you are allowed to work together with your business team. For example, you can copy files between OneDrive for Business and SharePoint directly, which can highly improve working efficiency.

Since some colleagues do not have a SharePoint account, you may ask if we can let SharePoint share files with external users. Exactly, you can use SharePoint Online to share a SharePoint site, files, folders, or document libraries with external users. You can configure the permission for external access according to your teams’ requirements.

How to let SharePoint share with external users

• Configure SharePoint sharing settings

If you want to share SharePoint folder with external user or share SharePoint files with them, you need to configure the external sharing settings. After setting up, you can let SharePoint share files with external users globally. Follow the detailed steps as follows:

1. Go to SharePoint Online and log into an admin account.

2. On the Microsoft 365 admin center page, click on Admin > Show All > SharePoint.

3. Under the Policies section, click on the Sharing option. Under Content can be shared with, set SharePoint sharing level as Anyone or New and existing guests.

4. After the above, click on Save.

5. Besides, you need to enable external sharing SharePoint online individual site in Sites > Active sites. Choose the site you want to share with external users and click Sharing. Likewise, choose the Anyone or New and existing guests option here. Finally, click on Save.

• Set up SharePoint Online site sharing with external users

After enabling sharing with external users in SharePoint Online, you can set up a SharePoint Online site sharing with external users. Here are the detailed steps:

1. Go to open the communication site that you want to share with external users.

2. Choose Share in the upper right part.

3. On the Share site page, input the name or email address of the recipient. After that, click on the Share button to send an email to invite them.

How to let SharePoint share files or folder with external users

Sometimes, you want to make SharePoint share folder with external user directly. Here we will introduce the way to share SharePoint files or folder. Just like sharing OneDrive with another user, you need to turn on SharePoint external sharing in advance. Then, you can refer to the following tutorial to get SharePoint shared folder with external users.

1. On your SharePoint Online site, open the document library. You can choose any file or folder to share with external users, then choose on Share in the feature bar.

2. Select Specific people in Link settings. And press Apply.

3. Input the email address of the external user who you want to share files with. Next, click on Send button to send the sharing link to the recipient.

An easier way to share files on SharePoint

If you often need to share SharePoint files with external users, we highly recommend an easier way to perform such a sharing task - using a professional cloud file-sharing service called MultCloud.

In MultCloud, you can choose a sharing method from 3 different sharing options: Public Share, Private Share, and Source Share. Each sharing option has its own pros and can meet all kinds of your needs.

What’s more, there is a shining point in MultCloud: you are allowed to add all your cloud services to MultCloud to manage all cloud storage accounts with convenience. MultCloud regards all your cloud storage services as hard disks, and you can access files in different cloud storage services on the MultCloud interface directly.

After adding your cloud storage services to MultCloud, you can sync files between any two of them. For instance, you can even sync SharePoint with Google Drive via MultCloud directly.

How to perform SharePoint external sharing via MultCloud? Here is the simple guideline and you can follow the steps below.

1. Navigate to the MultCloud official web page. Sign up for a new MultCloud account and log into it.

2. Click on Add Cloud on the left taskbar. Then press the SharePoint Online icon in the right page to add your SharePoint account to MultCloud.

3. Then you will see your SharePoint Online page. Check any file or folder that you want to share with external users. Then click on the Share icon on the top.

4. The Share with others page will pop up. Here, you can choose any sharing option for your files, then click on Create Share.

★ Tips: Here are brief introductions of these 3 different sharing options.

Public Share: Any external user can access the file by clicking the sharing link directly.

Private Share: External users need a password to access the sharing files.

Source Share: The sharing link is created from the source cloud storage.

5. After choosing the sharing option, copy the sharing link and send it to any external user to let them access your files or folder.

Written in the end

Now, you have known how to let SharePoint share files with external users. Besides, we also introduce a good cloud storage manager - MultCloud to you, which can help you manage multiple cloud storage accounts from more than 30 different cloud storage services on one interface easily.