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Question

External Collaboration blocked due to company enterprise settings

  • August 19, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 38 views

Hi,

 

I am working with another company on a shared project. They are trying to invite me as an external collaborator to one of their Box folders.

 

However they are getting the following error:

Invitations could not be sent to the following people because external collaboration is restricted by either your or their enterprise: <personal email>

 

I believe this is due to restrictions on our companies Box account. However, I am not a managed user of that Box account and have set up a separate free account to try and separate myself from their permissions settings. Despite this, the invitation is still being blocked.

 

Is there any way to make this invitation work despite my email address sharing a domain with my companies enterprise?

 

 

1 reply

  • Jill
  • Community Manager
  • August 24, 2026

Hi ​@cam.l,

 

Welcome to Box Community! 

 

The error message you are encountering—"Invitations could not be sent to the following people because external collaboration is restricted by either your or their enterprise"—occurs because Box applies domain-level security policies to all email addresses sharing a company's registered domain, even if the account is set up as a standalone or free account.

Because your email address shares your company's domain, enterprise external collaboration settings (such as allowlisting or sharing restrictions) are enforced, preventing unmanaged accounts under that domain from bypassing those rules.

Here are the recommended options to resolve this issue and enable collaboration on your project:

  1. Request that your company's Box Administrator add the partner company's domain to your organization's Collaboration Allowed List (located in Admin Console > Enterprise Settings > Content & Sharing > Collaborating on Content).

  2. Ensure the partner company's Box Administrator adds your company's domain to their Collaboration Allowed List as well.

  3. Once both organizations have mutual allowlisting in place and external collaboration permissions are granted, the invitation will go through successfully.

  4. If permitted by your organization's policies, you can accept the invitation using an account registered under a personal or external domain that is not linked to your enterprise's domain restrictions.

  5. If folder-level collaboration cannot be established immediately, the partner company can provide access by generating a secure or password-protected Shared Link (with view/download access) to the relevant files or folders, provided their enterprise settings permit external link sharing.

 Hope this helps. Thanks for posting!

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