Enabling MOSS Anonymous Access

1. From Central Administration > Application Management > Application Security > Authentication Providers, select a Web application and the zone you want to modify. This is usually default.

2. In the middle of the page, check Enable Anonymous Access and choose Save

3. All site collections in that Web application can now have anonymous access enabled.

4. Go to a site collection in the Web application you just enabled anonymous access for

5. From Site Actions > Site Settings, open Advanced Permissions

6. From the Settings drop-down menu, select Anonymous Access

7. For this example, enable anonymous access for Lists and Libraries and click OK

8. Browse to any document library in this site collection

9. From the Settings drop-down menu, select Document Library Settings

10. In the Permissions and Management column, select Permissions for this document library

11. From the Actions menu, select Edit Permissions to break inheritance

12. From the newly appeared Settings drop-down menu, select Anonymous Access

13. Check View Items and click OK.

Enable Anonymous Access

This info originally came from: http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2006/09/25/Enabling-anonymous-access-in-SharePoint-2007.aspx

First, enable anonymous on the IIS web site:

• Launch IIS - Start / Administration Tools / IIS
• Select the web site, right click and select Properties
• Click on the Directory Security tab
• Click on Edit in the Authentication and access control section

Or, using the Central Administration section:

• Central Administration / Application Management
• Select “Authentication Providers” in the “Application Security” section
• Click on the “Default” zone (or whatever zone you want to enable anonymous access for)
• Under “Anonymous Access” click the check box to enable it and click “Save”
  
  
  

NOTE: Make sure the “Web Application” in the menu at the top right is your portal/site and not the admin site.

You can confirm that anonymous access is enabled by going back into the IIS console and checking the Directory Security properties.

Next, enable anonymous access in the web site.

• In your web site navigate to the site settings page. MOSS: Site Actions / Site Settings / Modify All Site Settings. WSS: Site Actions / Site Settings.
• Under the “Users and Permissions” section click on “Advanced permissions”
  
  
  
  
• On the “Settings” drop down menu (on the toolbar) select “Anonymous Access”
• Select the option you want anonymous users to have (full access or documents and lists only)
  
  
  

Now users without logging in will get whatever option you allowed them.

A couple of notes about anonymous access:

• You will need to set up the 2nd part for all sites unless you have permission inheritance turned on
• If you don’t see the “Anonymous Access” menu option in the “Settings” menu, it might not be turned on in Central Admin/IIS. You can manually navigate to “_layouts/setanon.aspx” if you want, but the options will be grayed out if it hasn’t been enabled in IIS
• You must do both setups to enable anonymous access for users, one in IIS and the other in each site