We often get asked how to share documents and folders from with People not members of a particular Microsoft Team. And this challenge has not changed with the introduction of Private Channels.
Use Cases
- The file is stored in a ‘Standard’ Channel, as a document owner or editor I want to share a file or folder with:
- A Company/Domain Member who is not a member of the Team
- An External Person/Account who is not a Guest of the Team
- The file is stored in a Private Channel, as a document owner or editor I want to share a file or folder with:
- A Company/Domain Member who is not a member of the Private Channel
- A Team Member who is not a member of the Private Channel*
- An External Person/Account who is not a Guest of a Private Channel
*A member of a Private Channel must first be a member of the Team. Removing a Member from a Team will also remove them Private Channels they are also members of.
The solutions I’m going to describe can be used with ‘Standard’ Channels or with Private Channels. We will start by sharing a file and finish off by sharing a folder.
Perpetration
Before we begin let’s review our environment and set-up a Microsoft Team, Private Channel and Sub-Folder
Tenant External Sharing Settings
I’m going to assume that your SharePoint Sharing settings are the defaults. If you are a SharePoint Administrator you can manage these here: https://[company]-admin.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/online/AdminHome.aspx#/sharing
This is a view of my Tenant’s “External sharing” settings:
Microsoft Team
Having created a Microsoft Team I’m going to create a Private Channel.
Next, select the Private Channel, click on the File tab and ‘Open in SharePoint ‘
The SharePoint Folder will open. Now add a new ‘sub’ folder called ‘Joe Blogs’
Open the folder and upload a couple of files (my old favourites are Test-01.docx and Test-02.docx).
Sharing Files and Folder
In the following examples, I am going to share a File and then a Folder. You will see that the steps are very similar.
Example 1: Sharing a File
In this example I’m going to share a file called Test-001.docx from the Joe Blogs folder. The other items within the Joe Blogs folder will not be visible or accessible.
- Click to the left of the Test-001.docx file to see a tick.
- Next click on the Share button in the toolbar.
- The sharing pop-up will probably default to “People in [Company] with the link”, click on this and select “Specific people”
- Before clicking ‘Apply’ you can decide to allow editing or not.
- Now enter the email addresses of the people to share the document with.
Opening a file as a non-Team Member
The account I shared Test-001.docx file with should receive the following email:
- Click on Open
TIP: if you are testing on one machine, don’t forget to use in-private browsing or a different profile for testing the second account.
- You may see a dialog box like below if your external account my require a verification code (MFA – multi-factor authentication):
- After entering the code then the file will load, see below:
Example 2: Sharing a Folder
In this example I’m going to share a folder called ‘Joe Blogs’. All items within this folder will be visible and in fact editable.
- Click to the left of the Joe Blogs folder to see a tick.
- Next click on the Share button in the toolbar.
- The sharing pop-up will probably default to “People in [Company] with the link”, click on this and select “Specific people”
Opening a folder as a non-Team Member
The account I shared ‘Joe Blogs’ folder with should receive the following email:
- Click on Open.
TIP: if you are testing on one machine, don’t forget to use in-private browsing or a different profile for testing the second account.
- You may see a dialog box like below if your external account my require a verification code (MFA – multi-factor authentication):
- The Folder will open showing the contents, in this case x2 files.
Conclusion
Sharing Files and Folder is not difficult, depending on your Companies policy and Tenant settings. Sharing of Team and Private Channels should be applied using the Microsoft Teams app interface. Anything more granular or complicated must be completed using the SharePoint interface.
And don’t forget access granted to folder and file does not give access to the rest of the Microsoft Team ecosystem unless they are a Team Member.