SharePoint Admin Center: How to Access & Use It

This is a working reference on the SharePoint admin center, maintained by our SharePoint admin support team. It covers the access URL, the roles required to open the console, what each section of the left navigation does, step-by-step instructions for the most common tasks, and the PowerShell alternatives when the console is not enough.

What the SharePoint admin center is

The SharePoint admin center is the web-based management console for SharePoint in Microsoft 365. It manages the tenant-level configuration of SharePoint Online: sites, sharing and access control policies, storage, the term store, migration tooling, and API access. It also carries several OneDrive settings, since OneDrive is built on the same service. Site-level administration — libraries, lists, pages, and SharePoint permissions inside a site — is done on the site itself by site owners, not in the admin center.

Access URL

The direct URL is the tenant admin site collection itself; it exists in every tenant and cannot be renamed independently of the tenant name. Signing in with an account that lacks an admin role returns an access denied page, not the console. The console layout and section reference are documented at Get started with the SharePoint admin center.

Roles required

Access requires an administrator role in Microsoft Entra ID, not a SharePoint license alone. Per About the SharePoint Administrator role:

• SharePoint Administrator — full access to the SharePoint admin center: create and manage sites, designate site admins, manage sharing settings, and manage Microsoft 365 groups. This is the standard role for SharePoint work.
• Global Administrator — includes all SharePoint Administrator permissions. Microsoft recommends assigning the lesser role for day-to-day administration and reserving Global Administrator for emergency scenarios.
• Site admins — manage individual sites but have no admin center access and need no Microsoft 365 admin role.

Three boundary cases worth knowing: role changes take about an hour to apply to admin center access; SharePoint Administrators do not automatically have access to site content or user OneDrives, though they can grant themselves access to any site; and managing the API access page requires at least the Application Administrator role in addition. The Term Store administrator is a separate SharePoint-level role for managed metadata, and the Migration Administrator role grants Migration Manager access without full SharePoint admin rights.

Sections and what each one does

The Advanced and API access entries only appear after an app catalog site exists in the tenant; without one, the navigation hides them.

Common tasks

Create a site

1. Go to Sites > Active sites > Create.
2. Choose Team site (creates a Microsoft 365 group) or Communication site, or browse other options for a plain site without a group.
3. Set the name, address, owner, and language, then select Create. Language cannot be changed later.

Restore a deleted site

1. Go to Sites > Deleted sites.
2. Select the site and select Restore. Group-connected sites restore together with their Microsoft 365 group.
3. Sites are retained for 93 days after deletion; after that they are permanently removed and can only be recovered through Microsoft support within a limited window.

Change a site owner or admin

1. Go to Sites > Active sites and select the site.
2. Open the Membership tab. For group-connected sites, edit group owners; for standalone sites, edit site admins.
3. Add or remove accounts and save. Changes apply within minutes.

Set external sharing for a specific site

1. Confirm the organization-level setting under Policies > Sharing is at least as permissive as what the site needs — a site can never share more broadly than the organization level, per Manage sharing settings.
2. Go to Sites > Active sites, select the site, and open Settings > More sharing settings (or the Sharing tab).
3. Pick the level — Anyone, New and existing guests, Existing guests, or Only people in your organization — and save.

Check or set a storage quota

1. Under Settings > Site storage limits, choose Automatic (all sites share the tenant pool) or Manual.
2. With Manual set, go to Sites > Active sites, select the site, and select Edit under Storage limit.
3. Enter the maximum in GB and an optional warning notification threshold. Details at Manage site storage limits.

PowerShell alternative

Two modules cover what the console cannot:

• SharePoint Online Management Shell — Microsoft's module (Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell) with tenant-level SPO cmdlets. Connect with Connect-SPOService against the admin URL, for example -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com. Setup is documented at Get started with SharePoint Online Management Shell.
• PnP.PowerShell — a community-maintained module with several hundred cmdlets covering site content, lists, pages, and provisioning, connecting via Connect-PnPOnline with a registered Entra app.

PowerShell is required for bulk site reports, settings with no UI (many Set-SPOTenant and Set-SPOSite parameters), automation, and auditing sharing links at scale.

On-premises: Central Administration is a different tool

SharePoint Server (2016, 2019, Subscription Edition) is not managed from the SharePoint admin center. On-premises farms use the SharePoint Central Administration website, an IIS site provisioned on a farm server during setup, plus the SharePoint Management Shell for farm PowerShell. Central Administration manages web applications, service applications, content databases, and farm patching — concepts that do not exist in SharePoint Online. Nothing in this article applies to an on-premises farm except the general split between farm-level and site-level administration.

When the admin center is not enough

The console does not cover permission audits across thousands of sites, sharing-link cleanup, broken permission inheritance, hub architecture design, tenant-to-tenant moves, or on-premises farm work. Those land in PowerShell, third-party tooling, or engineering time. SharePoint support from Medha Cloud covers SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server administration, migrations, permission remediation, and break-fix.

FAQ

What is the URL for the SharePoint admin center?

https://tenantname-admin.sharepoint.com, with your tenant name in place of tenantname. It is also reachable at admin.microsoft.com/sharepoint, or from the Microsoft 365 admin center under Show all > Admin centers > SharePoint.

What role do I need to open it?

SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator in Microsoft Entra ID. Site owners and site admins without one of these roles cannot open the admin center. After a role assignment, access takes about an hour to activate.

Can a SharePoint Administrator read the content of every site?

Not automatically. The role manages sites and policies but has no default access to site content or user OneDrives. An administrator can, however, add themselves as a site admin on any site, which grants content access and is recorded in the audit log.

Does the SharePoint admin center manage SharePoint Server?

No. On-premises SharePoint Server farms are managed through the Central Administration website and the SharePoint Management Shell on the farm itself.