…covering cloud technologies such as Office 365, Azure, Amazon and, of course, SharePoint

SharePoint Online - Content Viewing Audit Logs

April 22, 2013 by Greg Carnie

Little important thing to note when evaluating SharePoint Online “Wave 15”: SharePoint Online does not have the components to enable View audit log reports.

What does this mean to me you ask… Well, within the View Auditing Reports screen, there is a link named ‘Content viewing’ (see below).

View Audit Reports menu
View Audit Reports menu

In full-instance of SharePoint, this would give you a report basically containing who clicked what and when.  In SharePoint Online you will always get “Report contains no data.” (see below for example).

Report contains no data.
Report contains no data.

For more information see: View audit log reports, under the ‘Events available for audit log reports’ section, ‘Opened and downloaded documents, viewed items in lists, or viewed item properties’ bullet.

Suggestion to Microsoft, hide that report in SharePoint Online. Having that link visible fairly misleading.


Written by Greg Carnie

I am a SharePoint consultant (Business Analyst by title) with Ideaca Knowledge Services based in Toronto, Canada. I have been actively working with SharePoint for three years now and have been specializing more in the developmental and architectural aspects of SharePoint. In a previous life I worked both with SAP and Microsoft Exchange. In my spare time (yes – I have figured out how to have a life outside of SharePoint – only took 3 years!!) I read, have started to get myself back into decent shape, and intend to spend a significant amount of time outside this summer.

You should follow Greg on Twitter