External Sharing Error with no apparent solution

Question

I am trying to allow my site members to share list items/files externally via the "specific person" setting, but they keep receiving an error saying that my organization's settings do not allow them to do so, regardless of every setting appearing to be set correctly.

I have checked and rechecked every setting I can find to fix this problem. Including, but not limited to:

• organization-wide sharing permissions in the admin center
• site-specific sharing permissions in the admin center
• verifying settings are correct in "change how members can share" settings on site
• verifying that members have edit permissions on site
• tried adding the members group to the "allow only users in specific security groups to share externally" setting, with no success.
• verified that sharing settings are set to "new and existing guests" both site-wide and organization-wide, for both onedrive and SharePoint.
• anything mentioned or described in any forums or troubleshooting pages I could find to read.

I've hit a dead-end, and my company is now at a complete loss on how to fix this. Please help.

Answer 1

Hi @Joseph , thank you for posting in the Q&A forum.

With all external sharing set to most permissive status, please navigate to your site > Site Settings > Site collection features and find "Limited-access user permission lockdown mode" feature, make sure it is deactivated. After that, test again to see the result.

If the issue remains, please go through the settings one more time as following:

1. Set External sharing to Most permissive (Anyone, or at least New and existing guests) via SharePoint admin center > Policies > Sharing. Also remove all restrictions under More external sharing settings.
2. Set the external sharing settings for the site to Anyone (or at least New and existing guests) via SharePoint admin center > Sites > Active sites > select your site > Sharing. Also remove the restrictions under Advanced settings for external sharing. You should see different error messages return when external sharing is not properly enabled. If you cannot decide what restriction is set on site level, go with the “Reset to organization-level settings” option at the bottom.
3. Enable sharing for site members via Settings > Site permissions > click "Change how members can share" under Site Sharing.
   You can also set on Site Permissions page ( _layouts/15/user.aspx ) > Access Request Settings.
4. Once again, check the "Limited-access user permission lockdown mode" feature under Site collection features.

References: Manage sharing settings. / Sharing options are greyed out when sharing from SharePoint Online or OneDrive.

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