External user conflict

Question

hi

i sent a sharing invitation to an external user. when that user received the invite, they accepted while they were logged into microsoft account as another user. so the username in admin / sharing on 365 is the wrong user.

i have deleted that unwanted user from admin panel. now i want to share the sharepoint site with the correct user again. but when i try to invite the user, the 365 system "finds" the old user. i cant completely remove the old user from the system, and i cant invite the user again with the correct email.

in this image you can see the old username is found, when typing the email address i want to add. the email address blacked out is correct, but the username is wrong.


Answer 1

Hi Dave,

You may try running the following command in SharePoint Online Management Shell Windows PowerShell to remove the external user and then check the outcome.

1.Remove the user from SharePoint Online.

$user = Get-SPOExternalUser -Filter *** Email address is removed for privacy ***

Remove-SPOExternalUser -UniqueIDs @($user.UniqueId)

For the details, please refer to https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj730437.aspx

2.Run the following command to check if the external user would display.

Get-SPOUser -Site https://contoso.sharepoint.com/ |fl

If the user name still displays, you can run the folloiwng command to remove it. Please check the user's LoginName in the result and replace the example in the following command. If it fails to run, check the command and run it again.

Remove-SPOUser -Site https://contoso.sharepoint.com/ -LoginName someone_example.com#ext#@contoso.onmicrosoft.com

To install SharePoint Online Management Shell Windows PowerShell, please refer to

Set up the SharePoint Online Management Shell Windows PowerShell environment

Thanks,

Felix

Answer 2

Hi James

No I cant find it under email address either. The user was in the 365 admin > active users list before, but I deleted it from there.

The problem is a issue with the invite system and Microsoft accounts. If you invite a user to your site, lets say *** Email address is removed for privacy ***, an email is sent to this address. The problem is that invite is NOT specific to *** Email address is removed for privacy ***. So if Tom clicks on the invite link and then signs in with a Microsoft account to *** Email address is removed for privacy ***, then he is added as a user to sharepoint / 365 UNDER THE WRONG NAME.

Its worse than that I think, because Tom can forward the invite email to a friend, or be 'hacked' and the email can find its way into other hands. So someone called *** Email address is removed for privacy *** can get into the system as a user.

In my case, Tom did not realize that someone was logged in in IE to a different account (Hotmail account) on a shared PC. So he accepted the invite, and now a user we don't know had access to the sharepoint site.

So I have deleted it as I explained. But when I try to add Tom again, it only pops up with the incorrect user, and I cant add Tom.

Answer 3

hi dave,

for this issue, could you share more information with us?

1. more details about "they were logged into microsoft account as another user. so the username in admin / sharing on 365 is the wrong user. ".  does this mean the external user's display name is usera, but after he accepted the invitation and logged in successfully, the display name shows in office 365 admin center > users > active users is not usera?

2. have you also tried searching the old user by tying his email address in user profile? what is the result?

3. if you can find his user profile in step 2, could you change his display name in user profile? (select edit my profile and change the name property)


regards,

james

Answer 4

Hi James

Thanks for the info.

I have tried that. I searched for first name, middle name, last name and parts of the name, and for that user, no records were found. So nothing to delete.

Any other user I search for returns a result.

Answer 5

hi dave,

if we share a site/library with an external user, and he logs in with his microsoft account successfully, office 365 will add a record in user profile.

could you go to sharepoint admin center and delete the user profile linked to the old user, then check it again?

(office 365 admin center > admin > sharepoint > user profile > manage user profiles > type the external user's name > delete.)


if the issue persists, please feel free to post back.

regards,

james