Sharing files in Microsoft Teams with anonymous users

Question

Hello everyone,

We use MS-teams for remote education. Most of the users who join our teams-meetings are anonymous users. We've noticed that during these meetings the function for uploading files is not present. And when trying too share a file through drag-and-drop a red cross appears.

Is it possible too share files (textfiles/pdf's) through Teams with anonymous users? If yes, how do we go about accomplishing this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hi @Anuar

Is it possible too share files (textfiles/pdf's) through Teams with anonymous users? If yes, how do we go about accomplishing this?

Yes, you can!

To complete it, you should make sure the SharingCapability is ExternalUserAndGuestSharing. We can find the SharingCapability by logging onto Sharepoint Online with PowerShell, as an admin user with the appropriate permissions:

Connect-SPOService  
Get-SPOSite -Identity siteurl | select SharingCapability  

If this file is upload to Teams Site, you could get the link by navigating to the team’s general channel and the files tab, then choose open in SharePoint. A browser window will open with a long URL, where you will need to extract everything including what comes immediately after /sites/. The rest of the URL can safely be ignored. The URL should look like this: https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/teamname. Let’s store the URL in a variable for later use:

$siteurl = https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/teamname  

Then all we need to do is change the SharingCapability property:

Set-SPOSite -Identity $siteurl -SharingCapability ExternalUserAndGuestSharing  

Now you can choose a folder or document whithin the team’s SharePoint site and share with Anyone. In this setting you would most likely also want to disallow editing. Once you hit Apply you can copy the link and distribute it as you choose.

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Answer 2

@JimmyYang-MSFT ,

Awesome, this works like a charm. Thank you for the thorough explanation.