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OneDrive Sharing Links - Does the "Guest Access Expiry policy" Apply to "Specific People" Links?

Stephane Fagnan 51 Reputation points
2024-05-04T02:15:40.4533333+00:00

I'm having an issue with a OneDrive integration in an application I'm developing. The integration allows creating "Specific People" sharing links, which are emailed to external users and require them to authenticate their email before accessing the shared file/folder.

I have seen in many places that "Specific People" sharing links do not expire. There is no expiry field available when creating the link, and I can't find any expiry settings in the Sharepoint Admin Center that seem to apply to "Specific People" links. However, some of my clients using my OneDrive integration have noticed that many of their "Specific People" links get dropped unexpectedly after a period of one or two months. I have also been able to reproduce this issue in my developer account.

There is one setting in the Sharepoint Admin Center that seems like it might apply:

Guest Access to a site or OneDrive will expire automatically after this many days

Since I've seen many references to the fact that "Specific People" links never expire, I thought this setting was not relevant. I also interpreted "Guest Access" as referring to "Guest Users", which can be added in the M365 Admin Center. My integration does not make any use of Guest Users, so I felt fairly confident that this setting did not apply to my use case.

However, I can't seem to find definite confirmation that this "Guest Access Expiry" setting does not apply to "Specific People" links. Since my clients links keep getting dropped, and I've now been able to reproduce this on my own account, I have to assume this is either a bug in OneDrive, or that this setting - or another setting I've not yet found - is causing the links to disappear.

I've noticed on my own account that some emails get dropped off of the "Specific People" link after a certain period of time, while others do not. Even though I added all the emails to the link at the same time. This inconsistency makes it seem more like a big than something that is being controlled by an admin setting.

Can someone please confirm whether the setting I referenced affects "Specific People" links, and/or if there is another OneDrive/Sharepoint/M365 setting that can cause "Specific People" links to be dropped after a certain period of time? Has anyone else noticed "Specific People" links getting dropped over time, or just one or two of the emails on a multi-person link getting dropped?

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A Microsoft file hosting and synchronization service.
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A group of Microsoft Products and technologies used for sharing and managing content, knowledge, and applications.
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  1. Emily Du-MSFT 42,341 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2024-05-07T08:55:20.8033333+00:00

    For Specific People sharing link, you could share with internal users and guest users.

    And per my knowledge, the setting "Guest Access to a site or OneDrive will expire automatically after this many days" in the SharePoint admin center is also applied to Specific People sharing link with guest users. It takes effect in all guest users links.

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