Allowed anonymous access on a Sharepoint list and still get prompted for a login

By peter.stilgoe

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If you have enabled anonymous access on your Sharepoint farm and you still get prompted for a login when trying to access a list, it is most likely that your list exists in a ‘Publishing Site’.

This is because by default all publishing sites have a feature called ‘ViewFormPagesLockdown’ activated. This basically provides extra security for internet facing Sharepoint sites by stopping anonymous users viewing pages like AllItems.aspx etc.

If you want anonymous users to be able to view such pages you need to disable ‘ViewFormPagesLockdown’

1 Remove all anonymous access from the site.
2 Deactivate the ViewFormPagesLockdown Feature
3 Make sure that the list inherits its permissions from its parent.
4 Do an IISreset and close all browsers.
5 Wait 60 seconds or so for everything to start backup
6 Turn anonymous access on at the site level
7 Close the browser.
8 Browse to the website as anonymous user.
9 Click on a navigation link to browse to the list in question
10 You should now be able to browse list items as an anonymous user.

Activate Feature:

stsadm -o activatefeature -url -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml

De-Activate Feature:

stsadm -o deactivatefeature -url -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml

More From pstilgoe

Sharepoint Lists, Sharepoint Publishing Sites, Sharepoint Security commento

9 Comments data

February 24th, 2010

About... peter.stilgoe

This author published 482 posts in this site.
Sharepoint, InfoPath, K2, Nintex, Business Process Mapping, Business Intelligence, Automation, ECM, Document Management, Document Imaging, Internet Marketing & Online Business Consultant Email / MSN: pstilgoe@hotmail.com LinkedIn: Pete Stilgoe - Sharepoint Consultant

9 Comments

At 2011.03.18 19:20, Lynne said:

We’ve been pounding our heads for months over various permission issues – and then we found this post today. It worked!! Thank you!!

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peter.stilgoe Reply:
March 18th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Glad it helped Lynne!

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At 2011.04.14 04:37, Ankit Khandekar said:

Hello thanks for you post but when i try to deactivate feature I get the message that failed to find the feature.xml. Also I checked the features folder I cannot see the folder with name ViewFormPagesLockDown Please tell me how I can solve this error?

Thanks
Ankit

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At 2011.04.14 07:34, Ankit Khandekar said:

Thanks for post its working now.

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At 2011.04.29 03:08, shambon said:

Hi,
m i try ur step but i still face the problem, the main problem is,
the anonymous user can open the list or library but their cannot open the disform.aspx. can you help me

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At 2011.05.10 12:43, sidhu said:

SharePoint 2010 Chart Webpart to sharepoint list, it’s all good but anonymous can’t see the chart and I get this error: Object reference not set to an instance of an …
Plz help me

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At 2011.07.15 15:50, Jason Kaczor said:

Thanks Peter – just what I needed – I typically don’t use publishing sites, but have been messing around with the “Site Directory” and wanted my root-web to be anonymous, was running in circles for about an hour before I found your post.

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At 2011.10.30 08:59, kamyar said:

thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks
If not, I really did not know how difficult is it to come
Sadegh Hadizade (Oct 30 12:44 PM):‎ Really did a great job that I thank my good friend in the right

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At 2011.11.19 01:26, SharePoint 2010 Anonymous Access to List Forms (dispform.aspx, allitems.aspx) | ShareSaint said:

[...] Full Credit goes to Pet Stilgoe: http://www.petestilgoe.com/2010/02/allowed-anonymous-access-on-a-sharepoint-list-and-still-get-promp... But because I’ve had to look this up twice I want to make sure I have this information [...]

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