Monthly Archives: July 2010

Hey, where is my anonymous access in SharePoint 2010?

I love the new ribbon in SharePoint 2010!

But, the ribbon can obfuscate the correct order of operations for setting up certain functions in SharePoint, such as anonymous access.

Case in point:  I have a new web application for which I would like to modify the anonymous policy.  So what do I do?  I click on the anonymous policy button and see… nothing.  The save button is disabled.  Huh?

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Wait a minute, don’t we have to enable anonymous access first… I can remember how to do that in MOSS 2007, but what about 2010?

Well, we need to modify the authentication provider to tell SharePoint to allow anonymous access on this web application.  Now that I know this, the ribbon makes the setup even easier.

  1. Click Authentication Providers on the ribbon
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  2. Click the zone you wish to enable anonymous access to.
    This will usually be default
    image
  3. Check the Enable Anonymous Access checkbox
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Now, that was easy!