Anyone with the link greyed out in OneDrive or SharePoint: how to fix it

Applies to: OneDrive for work or school and SharePoint in Microsoft 365, including files in Microsoft Teams. Personal OneDrive accounts have no admin settings, so the causes below don’t apply there.

Why the option is greyed out

An Anyone link is a link that works for whoever has it, with no sign-in. Because it can be forwarded and can’t be traced to a person, Microsoft 365 only offers it when the external sharing level is Anyone for the place where the file lives. If any level is set lower, the share dialog falls back to People in your organization or Specific people, and Anyone stays unavailable.

The levels, from broadest to narrowest:

Level	Where it’s set	Who can change it
Organization (SharePoint)	SharePoint admin center, Policies > Sharing	SharePoint admin
Organization (OneDrive)	Same page, second slider; never more open than SharePoint	SharePoint admin
Security groups	Same page, More external sharing settings	SharePoint admin
Site or team	SharePoint admin center, Active sites, or a sensitivity label	SharePoint admin (or a label)
One person’s OneDrive	Microsoft 365 admin center, Active users, OneDrive tab	Admin

The level that applies is always the strictest one in that chain. That is why a file in one person’s OneDrive can offer Anyone while a file in a Teams site, in the same organization, can’t.

If you’re not an admin

Nothing you change on your own PC unlocks the option: not signing out, not a different browser, not the OneDrive app. (If the OneDrive app won’t sign in at all, that’s a different problem; see OneDrive error 0x8004de40.) What you can do:

• Share with Specific people and type the outside person’s email address. If your organization allows guests, they get a link that works after they confirm their email or sign in.
• Check where the file is. If it’s in a Teams or SharePoint site, sharing may work from your own OneDrive, but only move it if your company’s rules allow that. A file in a synced folder on your PC lives in one of those places too; right-click it in File Explorer and choose View online to see which.
• Ask IT, and tell them the file’s location (the site or team name). An admin can see at once which level is blocking it. They may have turned Anyone links off on purpose.

Moving files to another cloud service to get around company policy usually breaks that policy. Ask first.

1. Check the organization sharing level

Everything below depends on this. In the SharePoint admin center, go to Policies > Sharing. Under External sharing there are two sliders, one for SharePoint and one for OneDrive, each with four positions:

• Anyone: allows Anyone links and guest sharing.
• New and existing guests: guests must sign in or use a verification code. No Anyone links.
• Existing guests: only guests already in your directory.
• Only people in your organization: no outside sharing at all.

Set the SharePoint slider to Anyone, and the OneDrive slider too if OneDrive files are affected. The OneDrive slider can’t be more open than the SharePoint one. Then click Save. Once it’s on, the same page offers Anyone under File and folder links and extra options for Anyone links: an expiry in days, and view-only limits for files and folders. If those view-only limits are on, Anyone links still appear but can’t give edit access.

2. Check the security group restriction

If Anyone links work for some people but are greyed out for others, look at More external sharing settings on the same page. When Allow only users in specific security groups to share externally is ticked, only members of the listed groups can share outside the organization.

Click Manage security groups. Each group has a Can share with setting: Authenticated guests only (the default) or Anyone. People who aren’t in a listed group, or are only in groups set to authenticated guests, never see an active Anyone option. Add the person to a group set to Anyone, or change the group’s setting if that matches your policy.

3. Check the site’s sharing level

This is the most common cause when the organization is already set to Anyone. Each site has its own level, which can be equal to or stricter than the organization’s. New sites often start below Anyone:

Site type	Default sharing level
Communication sites and classic sites	Only people in your organization
Team sites without a Microsoft 365 group	Only people in your organization
Team sites connected to a group, including Teams	New and existing guests, or Existing guests if group owners can’t add outside people
OneDrive	Anyone (follows the organization setting)

To change it, open the SharePoint admin center, select Active sites, select the site, open the Settings tab and choose More sharing settings. Pick Anyone and save. Labels in this panel have changed over time; older guides call it the Policies tab. Site owners can’t change this level themselves; it needs a SharePoint admin.

The same panel can also set the site’s default link type. A default only decides which option is pre-selected; it doesn’t grey anything out.

4. Check the person’s own OneDrive setting

Every OneDrive is a site too, so an admin can tighten sharing for one person’s OneDrive. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Users > Active users, select the person, open the OneDrive tab and choose Manage external sharing under Sharing. If it’s set lower than Anyone, that person can’t create Anyone links from their own OneDrive, even when colleagues can.

5. Check sensitivity labels

If your organization uses Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels on sites and teams, a label can set the site’s external sharing level. A site labelled for internal or confidential content may be limited to guests or to the organization, and changing the site setting by hand won’t stick while the label controls it. Check the label on the site (it shows in the site header and in Active sites) and ask whoever manages labels whether the content is meant to be shared openly.

Labels can also set only a default link type, which users can still change. Those don’t grey out the option. Microsoft says label changes can take up to 24 hours to apply to sites.

Where Anyone links never work

Some places don’t offer Anyone links at any setting:

• Files in a Teams shared channel. Microsoft lists shared channel sites as not supporting Anyone links. Share from your own OneDrive instead, if policy allows.
• SharePoint site pages (.aspx files). A Microsoft program manager confirmed on the Tech Community forum that sharing pages with Anyone links isn’t supported.
• Folders on sites with the Limited-access user permission lockdown mode feature turned on. This is reported by admins on forums rather than documented by Microsoft as a cause. Sharing individual files instead of the folder is the safe workaround; turning the feature off can affect publishing sites, so test first.

PowerShell: check and set the level

Admins with the SharePoint Online Management Shell can see and change a site’s level directly. Each SharingCapability value matches one slider position:

SharingCapability	Admin center label	Anyone links
ExternalUserAndGuestSharing	Anyone	Yes
ExternalUserSharingOnly	New and existing guests	No
ExistingExternalUserSharingOnly	Existing guests	No
Disabled	Only people in your organization	No

Check a site, then open it to Anyone (replace the address with your own site or OneDrive URL):

Get-SPOSite -Identity https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales | Select SharingCapability
Set-SPOSite -Identity https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales -SharingCapability ExternalUserAndGuestSharing

This fails if the organization level is stricter, because a site can’t be more open than the organization. Only open sites to Anyone where unsigned links are acceptable: Anyone links can be forwarded and aren’t tied to a person.

Related guides

• How to stop OneDrive from syncing on Windows
• OneDrive error code 0x8004de40: how to fix it
• Microsoft Teams tips and tricks
• How to add a shared mailbox in Outlook

Official sources:

• Microsoft Learn: Manage sharing settings for SharePoint and OneDrive
• Microsoft Learn: Change the sharing settings for a site
• Microsoft Learn: Set-SPOSite