SharePoint Designer Access for Developer

Question

We need to make some UI changes in O365 SharePoint, and the developer is unable to connect through SharePoint Designer. He has admin and designer privileges to the site collections, but still cannot access, and I cannot figure out why.

The developer in question is a vendor, and has SP Designer installed on his machine by his own company's IT department, as we are not allowed to install it for him on a dev server. How can we connect him to our environment?

Answer 1

Yes, it probably is an authentication conflict. Authentication has long been a disaster in Msft 365, and Msft seems uninterested or incapable of fixing things. If your developer is accessing other tenants, he'd probably have to sign out and clear cookies to allow sign into your tenant in a "local" app like SPD.

Answer 2

Hi,

The site is actually in classic SharePoint. He is trying to edit the master page to build out a section to display weekly operational updates, which are currently uploaded as documents to a library in another site collection. Scripting is enabled, as is "add and customize settings."

I myself am able to access this site SPD, but I am only able to when I am logged into SharePoint on IE browser. Otherwise I get an error "We are unable to connect right now. Please check you network."

With this error, it makes me think this is an authentication issue.

Answer 3

Dear Alyssa,

Welcome to the forum here.

If you are using the modern SharePoint sites, you may be unable to access them by SharePoint Designer 2013. For modern SharePoint sites' customization, you may use the SPFX solution.

That's nonsense - of course you can access modern sites in SP Designer. The question is about why his developer can't open sites in SPD which is more likely related to the chaotic permissions function in SP. What exactly does the dev need to do in SPD? Keep in mind there's not much you can do in SPD if you're using the modern ui - most functions are blocked.

That said, can the dev open other tenants in SPD? I think there's a setting that enables opening SPD which should be on. Then you have to make sure there's no conflict between yours and other tenants the dev may be logged into. Also check to make scripting is enabled - the bizarrely named "add and customize pages" option.

Answer 4

Dear Alyssa,

Welcome to the forum here.

If you are using the modern SharePoint sites, you may be unable to access them by SharePoint Designer 2013. For modern SharePoint sites' customization, you may use the SPFX solution.

For your reference: Customizing "modern" team sites

Thanks for your understanding and have a nice day!

Cliff