M365 Global Reader cannot access some Teams sites

Rob 0 Reputation points
2026-10-05T14:27:11.2666667+00:00

Good day,

I have an auditor who requires read-only access to all our M365 SharePoint and Teams sites. We thought to solve this through the M365 Global Reader role (he's also allowed to see our tenant configuration). However, on one Teams site he is now denied and prompted to request access.

This site doesn't appear special to me. It is set to Private, could that possibly be an issue?

And should Global Reader not be fit to grant read permissions on every site, what would the best way be to accomplish this? Some sources suggest SharePoint Administrator, but that's far too heavy. The auditor isn't allowed to change anything.

Microsoft Security | Microsoft Entra | Microsoft Entra ID
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  1. Vasil Michev 128.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2026-10-05T15:23:43.3366667+00:00

    Even SharePoint Administrator does not grant access to all sites by default, you still need to add yourself (or the relevant user) to non-public sites. In your scenario, if it's a single site that's causing the issue, simply add (invite) the user therein.

    If the issue affects multiple sites, you can use SharePoint Online PowerShell, the PnP module or the Graph API to grant access in bulk. Let us know if you need such examples.

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