Your Organization is Preventing You from Selecting this Option

When you attempt to share any document or file with an external user, you may receive a message stating, ‘Your organization is preventing you from selecting this option‘. This is not an error per se, but rather information indicating that you cannot use a specific option in SharePoint Online to share this document.

A SharePoint administrator is typically responsible for the setup and configuration of SharePoint Online. This issue is related to a configuration in SharePoint Online specifically about External Sharing.

The External Sharing option in SharePoint Online enables users within your organization to share content with external parties, such as partners, clients, or third-party organizations.

Some organizations with stringent security controls often choose to disable External Sharing entirely. This ensures that users can only share documents or files within their organization, limiting sharing exclusively to internal users. This practice is considered a strong security measure.

Nevertheless, there may be scenarios where the content of a specific SharePoint site needs to be shared with a third-party organization for enhanced project collaboration. In such cases, keeping External Sharing completely disabled could lead to issues, prompting users to seek alternative, potentially insecure methods for sharing documents.

In this blog post, we will explore how to enable external sharing with anyone and address a configuration issue that prevents users from sharing documents externally. Let’s delve into the details.

Where do you see the Error “Your organization is preventing you from selecting this option”

When attempting to share a document in SharePoint Online, you may observe that the ‘Anyone’ option in the Sharing settings pop-up is grayed out. Hovering your mouse over the Information Icon (i) reveals the message: ‘Your organization is preventing you from selecting this option’

1. Log in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center as either a SharePoint administrator or Global administrator.
2. Click on the “SharePoint” link under Admin centers to access SharePoint Online with administrative privileges.
3. Navigate to the desired site and enter the Document Library.
4. Locate the file you wish to share and click on the three dots (ellipsis).
5. Select “Share” from the options.

• Click on “People in <org> with the link that can edit to open additional sharing settings.
• On the Sharing Settings Options page, you will notice that the “Anyone” link is grayed out. Hover your mouse over the information icon (i), and you will receive the message “Your organization is preventing you from selecting this option“.

How to Fix “Your organization is preventing you from selecting this Option” Error

To fix this issue, you would need to check and reconfigure External Sharing in SharePoint Online. This requires configuration in two places: first at the Organizational Level and second at the Site Level.

Even if you set the most permissive levels and enable ‘Anyone with the link‘ sharing option at the organizational level, if the site-level external sharing settings do not permit sharing the content with ‘Anyone‘, you will still encounter the same issue. Therefore, it is crucial to configure settings at both levels. Let’s go through the steps:

In situations where an organization’s security team restricts external sharing for all sites, you can maintain the organization setting at the most permissive levels and manage external sharing on a site-by-site basis. It’s important to note that Site Level External Sharing settings take precedence over Organizational Level settings.

Note

Reconfigure External Sharing at the Organizational Level

1. Log in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center as either a SharePoint or Global administrator.
2. Navigate to the SharePoint Online administration by clicking the “SharePoint” link under Admin centers.

• Click on “Policies > Sharing” in the left-hand side options pane.

• Adjust the sliders for SharePoint and OneDrive by moving them to the top to increase permissiveness. This will enable users to share files and folders using links, granting access to anyone with the link without requiring authentication.

• Navigate to “File and Folder links” then enable/select the “Anyone with the link” option and save your changes.

“Anyone with the link” option is accessible only when your external sharing setting is configured as “Anyone”. Forwarded links function both internally and externally, but it’s important to note that tracking access or users who have accessed shared items is not possible with this option.

This is most suitable for files and folders in SharePoint and OneDrive that are not considered sensitive.

Note

Reconfigure External Sharing at the Site Level

To share your SharePoint site’s content with anyone using a link, you need to configure Site-Level External Sharing and set it to “Anyone“. Follow the steps below to enable External Sharing for Anyone at the SharePoint Site Level.

1. Log in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center as either a SharePoint or Global administrator.
2. Click on the “SharePoint” link under Admin centers to access SharePoint Online as an administrator.
3. Navigate to “Sites” and select “Active sites“.
4. Choose the specific site for which you want to configure External Sharing.
5. Click on the “Sharing” link in the top menu.
6. Under External Sharing options, select “Anyone” and then click “Save“.

Verify if the “Anyone” Option in Sharing Settings is now Enabled

• Now, let’s check if the option “Anyone” is available when attempting to share a document from the same site that previously displayed the “Anyone” option as greyed out.

• Click on “Anyone with the Link can edit” to access the Sharing settings. You’ll observe that the “Anyone” option is now enabled and selected by default.

Deactivate “Limited-Access User Permission Lockdown Mode”

Although you should be able to send any documents to anyone after configuring both Organizational level settings and Site level settings, if you still encounter issues, you can also check if Limited-access user permission lockdown mode is activated. If it’s active, deactivate it by following the steps below:

1. Log in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center as either a SharePoint or Global administrator.
2. Click on the “SharePoint” link under Admin centers to open SharePoint Online as an administrator.
3. Navigate to “Sites” and select “Active sites“.
4. Click on the specific site to open/launch the site page.
5. Click on the settings icon on the top right-hand side.
6. Choose “Site information” and then select “View all site settings“.

7. Under “Site Settings,” navigate to “Site Collection Administration,” and click on “Site collection features.

• If “Limited-access user permission lockdown mode” is activated, deactivate this option.

Disable External Sharing in Sharepoint Online

If you want to disable external sharing completely in your SharePoint Online organization, I have authored a detailed blog post providing step-by-step instructions on making this change. Please follow the blog post titled “How to Disable External Sharing in SharePoint Online“.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we’ve explored the resolution for the error “Your organization is preventing you from selecting this option” which involves enabling external sharing with anyone. The solution entails configuring external sharing to the most permissive level at the organization level. Additionally, it requires configuring external sharing for each site, setting it to “Anyone,” to empower users to share content externally.