Anonymous Access to SharePoint 2013 Document Library

I want to share my experience when testing and creating a public share document on an intranet site that can also be accessed from internet.

Step to create

• Go to Central Administrator > Manage Web Applications
• Select web application you want to enable
• On the ribbon menu click on Authentication Providers
• Click on the Zone you want to enable anonymous access
• Mark Enable anonymous access and click Save

 

This will allow site to be share to anonymous user, but we need to specified which site to share.

• Go to the site you want to share
• Head to Site Settings > Site Permissions
• On the ribbon menu click on Anonymous Access

 

Then the library we want to share

• Select Lists and libraries and click OK to save this setting
• Head to document library settings Permissions
• On the ribbon menu click on Anonymous Access
• Mark View Items than click OK

 

Thinks to know

1. Anonymous user cannot access home site with this setting, so you need to send them link to that document library.
2. Anonymous can be set for 1 document library or list. But despite what this link told me, I didn't find how to share only 1 item.
1. If you Set Site Permission to Nothing, you won't find option to allow access view to anonymous user in document library.
2. To share only 1 item, you need to enable anonymous access to those library and break others items permission that you don't want to share
3. If you still ask for login to document library
1. Disable site collection feature "Limited-access user permission lockdown mode"
2. Enable anonymous to entire site
3. Enable inherited permission in target document library
4. Test access to site and document library (both should be accessible)
5. Enable anonymous to List and libraries
6. Disable inherited permission in target document library
7. Grant view to anonymous user
8. Test access to site (it should ask for login)
9. Test access to document (it should be accessible without login)
10. Enable site collection feature "Limited-access user permission lockdown mode"
11. All above combination did the trick for me.

 

Reference that I used to find this:

• http://www.dotnetsharepoint.com/2013/08/how-to-enable-anonymous-access-in.html
• http://blog.cloudshare.com/blog/2012/10/15/how-to-enable-anonymous-access-to-a-sharepoint-2013-site
• http://www.sharepointblogs.be/blogs/vandest/archive/2013/01/26/sharepoint-2013-and-anonymous-users-accessing-lists-and-libraries.aspx