How to find and clean up sharing links in SharePoint

Transcript

Runtime 4:12. Created by the Cognillo product team. Narrated with an AI-generated voice.

0:00 Thanks for joining. Before we begin, just a disclaimer: this video was written by the Cognillo team, and this voice-over was AI-generated. In this video, we'll report on every sharing link on a SharePoint site, then clean them up in bulk: removing links, narrowing who they work for, and shortening when they expire.

0:20 We start on Tasks. Pick a site on the left, here the Architecture knowledge base. The middle column shows its seventeen lists, with about ten thousand items. You can narrow it to specific lists, but we'll scan them all.

0:33 On the right, open Oversharing. The reports at the top only read. They never change anything in SharePoint. The fixes below, like removing or downgrading links, and setting link expiry, all start from that same report. So open the Sharing links report.

0:50 The standard preset covers every link, including expired ones. In scope: one site and seventeen lists. Click Next, and the summary shows what the job will do. Under Settings, choose which links to include: Anyone links, people in your organization, specific people, and expired links.

1:15 Click Run now. The toolkit reads every list and library on the site and collects each sharing link. We've sped this up. Ten thousand items took about a minute.

1:27 The report opens in the Matrix view, grouped by item. The totals line sums it up: eight sharing links, no Anyone links, and no external users. Expand each file to see its links.

1:39 Each row shows the link's scope, organization or specific people, and its permission level, read or contribute. Scroll right to see who created each link, and when it expires.

1:53 Now let's clean up. Two of these are organization links with edit access, on the budget and the macro workbook. Anyone in the company with the link can change them. Tick both, and the Actions panel opens. Remove the links is already selected.

2:08 Click Remove two links, and you get a review first. Nothing happens until you apply. It runs as a job with your SharePoint connection, and a removed link can't be restored. Apply.

2:24 Both links are gone. The report updates in place, with six sharing links left, and every change is logged in History.

2:32 The Customer Pay Codes spreadsheet has an organization edit link too. Instead of removing it, narrow who it works for. Nobody is listed on this link, as the warning says, so choose People who already have access.

2:45 SharePoint can't change a link's audience in place, so the toolkit replaces it with a new link, and the old URL stops working. Apply. The link scope now reads Users with existing access.

3:03 Finally, expiry. Tick the two organization read links, on the customer checklist and the file share workbook, and choose Change when they expire. You can extend, shorten, set one date for every link, or remove the expiry. We'll shorten each by fourteen days.

3:20 The review shows each new date. December twenty-eighth becomes December fourteenth, and November thirtieth becomes November sixteenth. Unlike removals, expiry changes can be undone. Apply, and both links are updated.

3:36 Open in History takes you to every job you've run. Filter to Changes, and there are the three cleanup jobs. Select one, and the details panel lists each change, with Undo for the whole job or for a single link. Undo stays available as long as the job is kept in History.

3:57 Thanks for watching. Run the Sharing links report on your own sites to see what's really being shared. And if you have any questions, email hello at cognillo dot com.