Share OneDrive Files Outside University
- Dan Jakubiak
Faculty, staff, and students may share with external users and utilize the same tools available to internal users. “External users” are those who do not have a “@uconn.edu” email address, note that this includes those at the UConn Health Center and UConn Foundation.
If you share a folder instead of a single file, the recipients will see all future items added to the folder.
Sharing a file/folder externally
Locate the file or folder.
This may be done using File Explorer (Windows), Finder (macOS), or the website s.uconn.edu/onedrive.
Right-click on the file/folder and choose Share.
Click on the settings gear to view the Sharing settings.
Choose Anyone from the list of choices.
Take a look at the settings at the bottom of this popup window after you have chosen Anyone.
Since this link can be used by anyone, there are some consideration you must make.
As always, you can choose whether the recipient can edit the files, or simply view the file and be unable to effect the files.
You may choose an expiration date. Once this date arrives, the link sent to recipients will no longer function.
Since users do not need to sign in (authenticate) to access the files, you should consider adding a password for this share. If you allow edit access, you are more likely to need a password.
If you choose “Can view” (no edit access), the Block download choice becomes available.
Make your decisions and then choose Apply.
You will now be brought back to the original Share window. Enter the email addresses of the recipients and click Share.
Take note that “Block download” is not a perfect protection of your data. For example, if you share a Word document with someone and give them read-only access and also block download, once they have the document open, they may simply highlight the text in the document and copy-paste it into a document on their own computer. The same can be said of a shared picture; the recipient may simply take a screenshot of shared materials. This is true for both external and internal sharing and those sharing data should stay conscious of the data they are sharing and who they are sharing the data with.