How to configure a SharePoint Online site collection for anonymous access?

Anonymous access is only accepted in the public web site in SharePoint Online. In the private site, such as Team Site, there is no Anonymous Access button in the Permission Tools. It is not possible to have a regular private site collection in SharePoint Online be available for anonymous access. Please note there is only ONE public site for each tenant like “company-public.sharepoint.com” that you can use for public access.

The procedure to enable the anonymous access to this public site is just publish this public site by clicking the top right link “Make website online”. 

When the public website is online, anyone from internet can view the entire site. You can verify this from permission setting as screenshot below.

You could disable anonymous access to this public site any time by making the website offline. When the public website is offline, it cannot be viewed or accessed publicly on the Internet. Instead, visitors to the site will see a login screen. Only authenticated users, like the website owner, invited designers or members can view and customize the site. This is the default experience in Office 365, which is usually how you want it while designing and customizing a new site. The reason is because you don’t want a half-designed website containing placeholder or missing content to be viewed by the public, including your customers. It’s a better idea to first complete the website then make it online.

In additional, you could make some pages not available to anonymous access by unpublishing them. Publishing and unpublishing pages is a convenient and more granular way to control when an individual page can be seen by everyone.

Regardless of the SharePoint Online public web site online or offline, the permission granted to authenticated users will be able to access the site based on their permission. The online or offline configuration only enable or disable anonymous access.

I'm still in the process to evaluate the compliance center report and eDiscovery search against the anonymous access users. If you have any experience on this, please let me know.

Tips to resolve OneDrive for Business sync issue - Credentials needed, please enter credentials

During the last three months, I have experienced at least four times that OneDrive for Business stop syncing to local laptop with message below “Credentials needed, We need your credentials to sync some libraries. Please click here to sync now”.

After right clicking OneDrive for Business icon and click “View Sync problems…”, you could find the place to enter the credential. However, you might still get the following error. 

If you try to repair the OneDrive for Business, you might also fail. If you try to sync from the OneDrive for Business portal, you will get several different errors below.

You might find many different OneDrive for Business sync issues already reported. Microsoft is aware of such issues and have a clear direction to improve the sync process. There are many enhancements coming after the Ignight conference. 

The OneDrive for Business sync issue normally happen right after window security patch or new Microsoft Office patches. Microsoft has published the six steps to fix sync issues. However, I found the most two efficient ways to fix this issue.

1. The first is to repair the Office Application. Here are the summary of the steps.

• Click Start > Control Panel
• Click Programs > Programs and Features
• Click the Office application you want to repair, and then click Change
• In Office 2013, click either Quick Repair or Online Repair
• Login to OneDrive for Business from O365 portal, click the sync icon 

You should all set to the folders and files synced again. Sometimes you might need to repair the Office multiple times and then restart your laptop to resolve the OneDrive for Business sync issue.

2. The second is to remove the OneDrive for Business cache as described in this support site.  After run the clean up, you need to verify the files under this location should be empty.

C:\Users\userid\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\15.0\OfficeFileCache

You could need to sync the OneDrive for Business sync again from the SharePoint online.

Before OneDrive for Business sync issue is fully addressed by Microsoft, you might need to continue using this workaround after each window or Office patch.