External access report for SharePoint lists and libraries

SharePoint Manager Plus helps you review external access to lists and libraries from a centralized reporting console, without switching between multiple native reports or relying on custom scripts. The List Wise External Users report gives you a centralized view of guest access across your SharePoint environment.

Why you need an external access report

In SharePoint Online, external access rarely arrives through a single, controlled path. A guest user invited to collaborate on one document library can end up with additional inherited access, and if permission inheritance is broken further down the hierarchy, that same user may retain access to lists and libraries they were never explicitly intended to reach. Sharing links can further complicate the picture by expanding access in ways that are difficult to review quickly across a large tenant.

Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found that third-party involvement in breaches doubled from 15% to 30%, reinforcing the need to continuously review vendor and external collaborator access.

Microsoft provides per-site sharing reports and data access governance reports to help admins review external access, permissions, and sharing activity. But those native views are still scoped by site, permission report type, or governance summary. They do not provide one ready-made tenant-wide view of external users. In large environments, this approach makes it harder to systematically detect oversharing, audit guest access to sensitive lists, or confirm that broken inheritance has not quietly exposed content outside the organization.

A centralized external access report closes that visibility gap by giving you a clear, list-level answer to the question of who outside your organization can reach what:

• Surface external access created by broken permissions: Identify lists and libraries where unique permissions have been applied and external users have gained access as a result.
• Audit guest access to sensitive lists: Review which specific lists and document libraries external users can access, and verify whether that access is still required.
• Identify external group memberships that broaden access: Spot cases where an external user's access comes from group membership rather than a direct permission assignment.
• Enforce least privilege: Verify that every external user and group is scoped to only the specific lists and libraries their role requires.
• Support structured access reviews for compliance: Generate a per-list, per-library inventory of external access across the tenant and use it to support recurring third-party access reviews.

What is the List Wise External Users report in SharePoint Manager Plus?

The List Wise External Users report provides detailed information about every SharePoint list and document library that external users can access across your tenant. It includes the site URL where the list or library resides, the object type, the specific location of that object within the site, and the name of the external user or group who holds access—giving administrators a precise, per-object map of guest access that native SharePoint reports do not surface in one ready-made tenant-wide view.

Compliance frameworks this report can support

Many organizations operate under frameworks such as the GDPR, ISO/IEC 27001, HIPAA, NIST SP 800-53, and the PCI DSS, which require them to manage third-party access carefully, apply least-privilege principles, and maintain clear visibility into access to sensitive business data.

The List Wise External Users report supports these efforts by giving administrators a consolidated view of which external users and groups can access specific lists and libraries across SharePoint Online. This visibility can help teams support access reviews, investigate permission gaps, and prepare for governance or audit discussions more efficiently.

What does the List Wise External Users report show?

Using SharePoint Manager Plus, you can filter the List Wise External Users report with the following field:

• Farm: Select the Microsoft 365 tenant from which you want to pull external user access data across lists and libraries.

The List Wise External Users report displays the following details for every external access record:

Native SharePoint reporting and PowerShell vs. SharePoint Manager Plus

In Microsoft 365, administrators can review external access through per-site sharing reports and data access governance reports in the SharePoint admin center. Those native options are useful, but they are still segmented by site, permission report type, or governance summary. They do not provide one ready-made tenant-wide view of which external users can access which lists and libraries.

PowerShell can help bridge some of those gaps. SharePoint Online Management Shell and PnP PowerShell can retrieve permission data, and tenant-wide external user review is possible with additional scripting. But correlating external users to specific lists and libraries across a large tenant still requires scripting effort, formatting, and ongoing maintenance. SharePoint Manager Plus reduces that overhead by bringing this view into a single report that administrators can run, filter, export, and schedule without scripting knowledge.

Benefits of SharePoint Manager Plus' List Wise External Users report over other SharePoint reports

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

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

Features that enhance the List Wise External Users report

SharePoint Manager Plus provides several built-in tools to help you act on, schedule, and share the insights surfaced by the List Wise External Users report.

• Export reports: Download the List Wise External Users report in CSV, PDF, HTML, or XLSX formats to maintain offline records for access review and compliance documentation.
• Automated report generation: Schedule the List Wise External Users report to run at defined intervals—daily, weekly, or monthly—so external access is continuously tracked without requiring manual effort.
• Real-time alerts for external access changes: Configure alerts to notify administrators when external users gain access to a list or library, or when related activity crosses a defined threshold, helping teams detect unintended permission changes quickly.
• Modify SharePoint permissions: Update or revoke permissions on specific lists or libraries with inappropriate external access directly from the SharePoint Manager Plus interface, without switching between site settings or scripts.

Reports that complement the List Wise External Users report

If you are auditing external user access and permission governance in SharePoint Online, SharePoint Manager Plus provides several other reports that build on the per-list, per-library visibility offered by the List Wise External Users report.

List Permissions report: Shows the permission structure applied to each list, helping you understand how external access is granted and where inheritance may have been broken.

Recently Created Lists report: Highlights lists created within a selected period, helping you track new additions and confirm they follow naming, metadata, and governance standards.

Item Wise Sharing Access report : Shows item-level sharing activity, helping you trace external access from the list or library down to the individual files and folders shared with external users.

External and Sharing Access report: Shows files, folders, and sites shared with external users or through sharing links, giving you a broader view of external access across SharePoint.

Expired Anonymously Shared Items report: Identifies files and folders shared through expired anonymous links, helping you review stale external access paths and confirm temporary sharing links are no longer active.

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.