About the SharePoint Administrator role in Microsoft 365
Users assigned the SharePoint Administrator role have access to the SharePoint admin center and can create and manage sites, designate site admins, manage sharing settings, and manage Microsoft 365 groups, including creating, deleting, and restoring groups, and changing group owners.
Global Administrators in Microsoft 365 can assign users the SharePoint Administrator. The Global Administrator role already has all the permissions of the SharePoint Administrator role.
For info about assigning a user the SharePoint administrator role, see Assign admin roles in the Microsoft 365 admin center. If a user's role is changed so they gain or lose access to the SharePoint admin center, it takes about an hour for the change to take effect.
Important
Microsoft recommends that you use roles with the fewest permissions. Using lower permissioned accounts helps improve security for your organization. Global Administrator is a highly privileged role that should be limited to emergency scenarios when you can't use an existing role.
Site management
Global Administrators and SharePoint Administrators don't have automatic access to all sites and each user's OneDrive, but they can give themselves access to any site or OneDrive. They can also use Microsoft PowerShell to manage SharePoint and OneDrive. See more about this role's Key tasks of the SharePoint admin below.
Site admins have permission to manage sites, but they don't need to have an admin role in Microsoft 365, and don't have access to the SharePoint admin center.
For info about adding or removing a site admin, see Manage site admins.
Term store administration
There is a separate role within SharePoint called the Term Store administrator. Users assigned to this role can add or change terms in the term store (a directory of common terms you want to use across your organization). To learn more, see Assign roles and permissions to manage term sets.
API access
To manage API access in the SharePoint admin center, the application administrator role or above might be required. For more information, see Manage access to Microsoft Entra ID-secured APIs.
Key tasks of the SharePoint admin
Here are some of the key tasks users can do when they are assigned to the SharePoint Administrator role: