Issues inviting external users to join SharePoint Site

Question

Our company has been having trouble off and on giving access to external users to a particular SharePoint site on our tenant. I'm at a loss for what to do to fix it and help the external users, so I'm hoping I can get some ideas. Some external users are able to access the site, but I feel like more often than not, we run into issues. A common workaround is to have the user set up a personal Microsoft account, and use that instead, but I hate to have them set up an account just for this purpose.

The error message that we're tackling right now is:

"Selected user account does not exist in tenant [tenant name] and cannot access the application '00000003-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000' in that tenant. The account needs to be added as an external user in the tenant first. Please use a different account."

The external user is on O365 with their company. I have checked with our IT team, and they've confirmed that the user is in Azure as a Guest. I also had the external user check on their end that "Office 365 SharePoint Online" has the setting "Enabled for users to sign-in?" set to Yes under Azure Active Directory. Our IT team has also checked this setting on our end, and it's set to Yes as well.

Does anyone have any ideas on what else to try?

Answer 1

I have literally been trying to figure any easy way to setup Sharepoint access for external users for about a year.

I have the certification from the learning center and I have been down COUNTLESS hyperlink worm holes on the Microsoft help pages.

The inability to simplify the process is why I am about to drop Sharepoint.

AND please dont tell me to use Power Pages.

Answer 2

Hi @Holly Kosec ,

How did you invite these external users to a SharePoint site?

You could try to invite these external users in Azure Active Directory admin center.

Azure Active Directory admin center > Users > New guest user > Invite user > type Email address

Then these users will get Invitations emails. They have to click "Accept Invitation" in that email.

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Answer 3

So how does this work in the new and improved Entra?

Answer 4

@Holly Kosec

I just noticed that this is question is in the learn community. You have about 5 other planets in the Microsoft universe to look for answers.
Literally had to setup linktree to keep track of all them.
https://linktr.ee/shelburne

I used to have all the steps in a board view in outlook but that feature was retired in May and now I have a JSON file I can share with you.
IT is UNBELIEVABLE how I am relying on a digital office platform that makes so many changes on the fly.