Hide Document Library Activity for external users.

Question

Hi,

We are using Sharepoint for working on documents across the organization. We found a problem (confidentiality problem) when sharing a folder with multiple external users, because everyone, even the external users, can see the activity of the library. They can see who modified what, with what other people we shared the folder, etc. So they have access to other peoples names and e-mails. They should only view the documents and nothing else.

Our case:

We have multiple projects and we work with external contractors.

Before starting the project we send information to multiple contractors so they can read, analyze and then make an offer on the work to be done.

We store all the project information in a Document Library in a folder (FolderA).

The information shared with those contractors is stored inside a folder (FolderB) who is insider FolderA.

Our people share FolderB with multiple external e-mails, with View only permission.

FolderA is restricted to people inside our organization.

The problem is that when an external user open FolderB , they can see all the Activity clicking on the (i) icon on the top right corner, where they not only can see the details of the file, but it they click "More Details" on the bottom of the details pane, they can see a lot more information. For example they can see the e-mails of other external people with whom we shared the folder. So they can see who are their "competitors", which can cause some issues...

I looked all over the documentation (as far as I know), forums, Bing, Google, CoPilot and I can't find a way to block the Document Library Activity to external users.

This is not an issue to other organizations ? How do they handle this?

We could just use an external service like Dropbox or something similar, but it's kind of dumb to copy the information and put it outside Sharepoint, having two different places to look at.

It's good to have all the project information in one place, even the FolderB where we know is all the information shared to external users.

Does anybody has an advice ?

Thank you !

Answer 1

Dear Hernan de Soto,

Good day!!

I understand your concern and to my knowledge, there is no out of the box feature or setting in the SharePoint Online to hide or remove the activity logs (open the details pane) in the Document Library or List and I have done some extensive search, also consulted some seniors in my team, where there is no success via out of the box feature in SharePoint Online.

I agree with you on having the ability to remove or hide the activity logs in the Details Pane of the Document Library or List in the SharePoint Online will benefit the users and I suggest you to add your valuable idea as feedback in the SharePoint · Community (microsoft.com) which is the best place to share our ideas and improve the Microsoft products.

However, it seems the requirement can be achieved with JSON code or some scripting and I would like to request you to give a shot by posting your concern in the related Microsoft community i.e., Questions - Microsoft Q&A with SharePoint Development tagto get the detailed help from the experts.

Apologies for redirecting you to a different community as the members in the category posted focus on the users with the out-of-the box concerns and have limited knowledge on the JSON code and development related scenarios, so to get the fast and better assistance, we have redirected you to the correct community.

Appreciate your patience and understanding. Have a great day!!

Best Regards,

Sophia