Removing external users from SharePoint Online

To remove external users from SharePoint Online, you can follow these steps:

1.      Go to the SharePoint Online site where the external user has access.

2.      Click on the gear icon in the top-right corner and select “Site Settings”.

3.      Under the “Users and Permissions” section, click on “Site permissions”.

4.      Find the external user that you want to remove and click on their name to select them.

5.      Click on the “Remove User Permissions” button in the ribbon at the top of the page.

6.      In the confirmation dialog box, click “OK” to confirm the removal of the external user.

Note: If the external user has been added to a specific group, you can remove them from the group instead of removing their individual permissions. To do this, go to the “Site permissions” page and find the group that the external user belongs to. Click on the name of the group to select it, and then click on the “Remove User Permissions” button in the ribbon at the top of the page.

Additional things to consider

1. The steps above will remove a user from the site but not from SPO as a whole. Reviewing external users access to SPO sites can be done with the external user report – Report on sharing – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn
2. It is always worth reviewing your external sharing settings there are lots of options these days – Manage sharing settings – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn + Microsoft 365 guest sharing settings reference | Microsoft Learn + Create a more secure guest sharing environment | Microsoft Learn
3. External sharing is often for more than just SharePoint now (e.g. Teams and Groups) there are some specific advantages of integration with Azure AD – Azure AD B2B integration for SharePoint & OneDrive – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn
4. Controlling external sharing settings can be managed through the use of sensitivity labels being applied to SPO sites, Teams, and Groups – Use sensitivity labels with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and SharePoint sites – Microsoft Purview (compliance) | Microsoft Learn
5. Customers with Azure AD P2 can use Access Reviews to help clean up old guest users – Access Reviews for guests in all Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups is now in public preview – Microsoft Community Hub
6. If there is a lot of cross-tenant collaboration then this is worth considering: What is a cross-tenant synchronization in Azure Active Directory? (preview) – Microsoft Entra | Microsoft Learn