Who are external users in SharePoint group "Everyone except external users"

Question

Hi,

Based on which attribute is user defined as external or internal for SharePoint?

thank you,

MG

Answer 1

Hi @Martin G ,

As mentioned in the link above,the external sharing features of Microsoft SharePoint let users in your organization share content with people outside the organization (such as partners, vendors, clients, or customers).

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Who is external user?

An external user is a person who is not part of your Office 365 subscription and yet he/she has been given the access to your content including files, documents, one or more sites.

What is Everyone except external users:

That group captures all internal users only. Internal means they have been assigned your domain name when set up in Office 365.

References:
External Sharing in SharePoint Online- An overview
How to grant all employees access to a SharePoint site via Everyone except external users Group

Note: Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. The sites are not controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there. Please make sure that you completely understand the risk before retrieving any suggestions from the above link.

=========Update1===========
You can view Active users and guest users in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Usually internal users are named by ******@yourtenant.onmicrosoft.com, while the mailboxes of external users may vary.

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Answer 2

Those are Guests invited to your tenant, as detailed for example here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/external-sharing-overview#what-happens-when-users-share

Answer 3

Hi,

thank you very much for quick answers @Elsie Lu_MSFT and @Vasil Michev and sorry for my late response. Well, I cannot accept answer yet.;-) Let me explain my issue, hope it helps:

I am creating new user in AD. So am setting all attributes for this user.
So, which attribute causes the user will fall into "internal" or "external" users?

There is some logic for automatic chain AD>Office365>SharePoint, but I think all begins in AD.

thank you,
MG