Expired anonymous sharing links report for SharePoint

Tracking expired anonymous links in SharePoint Online is difficult when the data is spread across native reports and manual workflows. The Expired Anonymously Shared Items report, one of more than 140 reports in SharePoint Manager Plus, brings that information into one place, helping you review expired shares more efficiently.

Why you need an expired anonymous links report

Anonymous sharing links in SharePoint Online are one of the most direct ways sensitive content reaches people outside your organization. When a link expiration policy is in place, those links are meant to stop working after a set period. But knowing that a link has expired and knowing which items were exposed through it, who shared them, and whether the expiration setting was ever changed are very different things.

The Cloud Security Alliance’s State of SaaS Security Report 2025 found that 63% of organizations report external data oversharing, making anonymous sharing-link reviews an important part of SaaS access governance.

While Microsoft provides per-site sharing reports and data access governance reports in the SharePoint admin center, those views are still fragmented by site, report type, or summary scope. They do not provide a single ready-made, tenant-wide report focused specifically on expired anonymous links at the item level. In large environments, administrators often still end up reviewing site-level reports one at a time or using PowerShell to compile the required data.

The Expired Anonymously Shared Items report closes that gap, giving you a consolidated view of expired anonymous shares so you can act on them:

• Audit the life cycle of anonymous sharing: See every item that was shared through an Anyone link, along with when that link expired and whether its expiration window was ever extended, so you have a clearer record for governance reviews.
• Identify shares with modified expiration settings: Spot instances where a link's expiration was manually extended, which may indicate an exception to standard sharing practices that deserves closer review.
• Prioritize remediation by access type: Distinguish between expired links that granted view-only access and those that granted edit permissions, and focus on the higher-risk items first.
• Support internal and regulatory audits: Maintain a timestamped record of anonymous shares and their expiration details to support access reviews and audit preparation.
• Review policy-sensitive sharing more effectively: Detect expired anonymous links created on sites governed by sensitivity labels or data loss prevention policies, and verify that sharing controls are being applied as intended.

What is the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report in SharePoint Manager Plus?

The Expired Anonymously Shared Items report provides detailed information about files and folders in SharePoint Online that were shared through anonymous Anyone links whose expiration date has passed. It includes the object name, object type, location within SharePoint, who originally shared it, the access type that was granted, when the link was set to expire, and when the expiration setting was last modified. This gives administrators a precise record of anonymous sharing activity that has reached its intended time limit and should be reviewed as part of sharing governance.

Compliance frameworks supported by this report

Organizations across industries are subject to information security and privacy frameworks such as ISO/IEC 27001, NIST SP 800-53, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and the GDPR, many of which include access control and data protection requirements that call for organizations to review, restrict, and document access to sensitive content.

The Expired Anonymously Shared Items report supports these efforts by giving administrators a consolidated view of files and folders that were shared through Anyone links and have now reached their expiration date in SharePoint Online. This visibility helps teams review anonymous sharing regularly, identify expired links that warrant cleanup or follow-up, and demonstrate that time-limited sharing is being monitored as part of broader access governance practices.

What does the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report show?

Using SharePoint Manager Plus, you can filter the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report with the following fields:

• Farm: Select the Microsoft 365 tenant from which you want to pull expired anonymous sharing data.
• Site: Narrow the report to a specific site collection to focus your audit on a particular team, department, or project site.

The Expired Anonymously Shared Items report displays the following details for every shared item.

Native SharePoint reporting and PowerShell vs. SharePoint Manager Plus

In Microsoft 365, you can review sharing data through per-site file and folder sharing reports and data access governance reports in the SharePoint admin center. These native options are useful, but they are still split by site, report type, or governance summary, which makes it harder to get one clear view of expired anonymous links across your environment.

PowerShell can help fill some of those gaps by pulling sharing link metadata through SharePoint Online and Microsoft Graph APIs. But it also adds scripting, maintenance, scheduling, and formatting overhead, especially for recurring reports. SharePoint Manager Plus brings these reporting needs into one console so you can review expired anonymous links and take action faster.

Benefits of SharePoint Manager Plus' Expired Anonymously Shared Items report over other SharePoint reports

With SharePoint Manager Plus, your Expired Anonymously Shared Items report combines the depth of PowerShell with the convenience of a centralized admin center.

For a more detailed comparison, check out this page on how to share files with external users in SharePoint.

Features that enhance the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report

SharePoint Manager Plus provides several built-in tools to help you act on, automate, and share the findings from the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report.

• Export reports: Download the report in CSV, PDF, HTML, or XLSX formats for distribution to security teams, data protection officers, or external auditors and for maintaining offline compliance records aligned with your retention policies.
• Automated report generation: Schedule the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report to run at defined intervals, such as daily, weekly, or monthly, so anonymous link expiration is continuously monitored without requiring manual effort from your team.
• Real-time alerts for anonymous link activity: Configure threshold-based alerts to notify administrators when anonymous links are created on sensitive sites or when an unusual volume of anonymous shares is generated within a defined window, enabling rapid response before links go unreviewed.
• Bulk permission management: Take corrective action based on report findings by updating permissions, revoking guest access, and managing access across files, folders, and sites without relying on additional scripts.
• Custom reports: Save reports with customized fields and filters so you can quickly access the data you need whenever it's required.

Reports that complement the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report

If you are auditing anonymous sharing governance and external access in SharePoint Online, SharePoint Manager Plus provides several reports that build on the visibility offered by the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report.

• Anonymously Shared Items report: Lists files and folders that are currently shared through active Anyone links, giving you the counterpart view to the expired links surfaced in this report. Together they provide broader coverage of the anonymous sharing life cycle.
• External and Sharing Access report: Surfaces every file, folder, and site currently shared with external users or through sharing links, including guest identities and link types. Use this report alongside the Expired Anonymously Shared Items report to see both the active external sharing landscape and the expired access paths within it.
• Item Wise Sharing Access report: Provides a tenant-wide, per-item breakdown of sharing activity including who shared each item, with whom, and at what access level. Use it alongside this report to place expired anonymous shares in the context of each item's broader sharing history.
• SharePoint permissions reports: Detail the permission assignments across sites, libraries, and items, including unique and inherited permissions. Correlating these with expired anonymous link data helps you confirm that the underlying permissions structure aligns with your governance review.
• SharePoint site activity reports: Monitor access and usage patterns on sites where expired anonymous links have been identified, helping you detect whether content was accessed before link expiration and flag any unusual interaction that warrants further investigation.

Other features of SharePoint Manager Plus

• SharePoint management: Grant, remove, or copy SharePoint permissions and manage group members in bulk without relying on complex scripts, simplifying your SharePoint administration.
• SharePoint reporting: Access over 140 prebuilt and custom reports for SharePoint, including permissions, site usage, content inventory, and security insights—all from a centralized dashboard.
• SharePoint auditing: Maintain a comprehensive, searchable audit trail of all activities across your SharePoint environment, including user actions, permission changes, and content modifications.
• SharePoint alerting: Get real-time alerts on critical events, such as permission changes, suspicious user activities, site access anomalies, and policy violations.
• Delegated administration: Empower help desk technicians with granular, role-based access to perform specific SharePoint administrative tasks without elevating native privileges.
• SharePoint migration: Simplify SharePoint migration by enabling seamless content and permission migration across sites and tenants with minimal downtime and full visibility into migration progress.