Why does a user not in a membership of my site collection gained access to many libraries when I shared a document with them?

Question

We are currently migrating to a SharePoint Online structure. In the setup, I have a parent hub site and 5-6 associated sites. Each site contains libraries.

As a test, I created a Word document in a library in site A. I shared this document with a user within my organization. That user is not a member of the site, nor are they in a group that is allowed on the site.

The user can open the document, and within that document, open the relevant library in site A. That is normal.

However, why can the user navigate, using the top menu, to a library within a site (site B) they have no access on? If they try to reach the top level of the site, they get denied. But if they aim at a library within the site, they can open it just fine.

All my sites are private.

Answer 1

Hi @klambert ,

Thank you for posting in this community.

It seems this is not a common issue per my test. However, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation. So, Please kindly provide more information below to let us work further.

1.Can you tell me in detail the steps you took to share this Word document?

2.Check what permissions this user has at the site permission level and library permission level(SiteA and SiteB).

Steps: Site permission->Advanced permissions settings->Check permissions

Please let me know the results to help you rule it out further.

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Answer 2

After testing, I manually removed all access of this user to all the sites and tried resharing a document. The issue has not occured again. It must have been old permissions that had not been deleted.

I also had issues with access to libraries within the same site, but found out that breaking permissions inheritance on the libraries fixed the issue.

Thanks for your help @Haoyan Xue_MSFT !

Answer 3

Hi @klambert ,

I'm glad to hear you solve the problem, if you have any issue about SharePoint, you are welcome to raise a ticket in this forum.I would make a brief summary of this thread:

Current status:

The issue has been solved. The solution is: removed all access of this user to all the sites and tried resharing a document. The issue has not occured again. It must have been old permissions that had not been deleted. Also had issues with access to libraries within the same site, but found out that breaking permissions inheritance on the libraries fixed the issue.

You could click the "Accept Answer" button for this summary to close this thread, and this can make it easier for other community member's to see the useful information when reading this thread. Thanks for your understanding!