How to create unique permissions for folders in a document library in SharePoint (365)

Question

I have a document library called "Test Documents" this has a folder under it called "Test Resources". This has 2 folders in it, "Folder1" and "Folder2" I have a group called "Folder2Group" I want the members of this group to be able to go to the site, Open "Test Documents", be able to open "Test Resources" and see "Folder1" and "Folder2". At this point I don't want the members of that group to be able to open "Folder1" at all. I would prefer they could not even request access, just get a message along the lines that they don't have the rights to open that folder. However I want them to be able to open "Folder2" and be able to edit/download whatever is in there. In fact to only ever to be able to get in that folder no matter what folders get created under "Test Resources". I'm much more familiar with doing this in Active Directory if that helps. I can do the same thing there easily, but cannot see how to do it in SharePoint. In AD this is accomplished, in large part, through inheritance. Can somebody walk me through how I would set this up here? We are a Small Business tenant.

Answer 1

Hi @Jim ,

Thank you for posting in this community.

In sharepoint, permissions are inherited upwards (if inheritance is not broken, the library inherits the site's permissions, the folder inherits the library's permissions, and the subfolder inherits the folder's permissions).The following is a detailed explanation and procedure:

You can grant "Folder2Group" Edit or Contribute permissions at the site permission level, realizing that this group can access the site, open "Test Documents" and be able to open "Test Resources"."You want group users to be able to see "Folder 1", but you don't want members of that group to be able to open "Folder 1". You want them to not even be able to request access, but instead just receive a message along the lines that they don't have permission to open the folder. "My suggestion in response to this request is that you simply break the permission inheritance for "Folder 1". This way the group users simply don't see that "Folder 1" exists and can't access the files in it. Because if you need users to be able to see "Folder 1" but not access the files in it, you need to interrupt the permission inheritance of each file in "Folder 1", which is very time consuming if you have a large number of files, and you still need to interrupt them one by one when there are new files.

“You want them to be able to open "Folder2" and be able to edit/download whatever is in there.” Folder2 inherits permissions upwards, with no interruptions, and can edit/download any of it without any action.

“In fact to only ever to be able to get in that folder no matter what folders get created under "Test Resources". ” After that, you can create new subfolders under Folder 1. This way the folder inherits the permissions interrupted by Folder 1. Under "Test Resources" the group can only access folder 2.

Hope the information can help you. And if there have any unclear or misunderstanding, please feel free to post back and we’ll continue to help you all the time!

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.