Sharepoint online - folder level permssion problem

Question

Hi,

I'm trying to share folders with specific people in SharePoint (without granting site access). I am clicking on the 3 dots next to the folder, and selecting Share. I am then selecting "specific people". By default the edit option is ticked.

When I share this link, the user opens the link but the edit permission somehow keep reverting back to "view" only.

I can open the manage option, and navigate to that user, and the settings have changed to view. When I change it back to edit, it again changes back to view only.

The settings worked perfectly for months, and then only recently this issue appeared, and all of our users can not edit now.

I have also tried to add the person directly, by selecting Manage from the folder, then chosing "advanced" and then adding them directly with "contribute" permissions, however it is still not allowing any editing rights.

Everyone that was previously added with edit rights were listed as "links giving access - people  you specify can EDIT", but now have all changed to "Links giving Access - People you specify can VIEW"

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Hi Rechel,

After you run those commands on SharePoint PowerShell, it will logically succeed in sharing the files to specific people with correct permission. However, it still failed sharing via SharePoint UI directly. This is a strange phenomenon.

Since we can’t reproduce the issue in our environment and our community support team has the limited resources, I suggest you contact the administrator in your company if you aren’t the administrator and follow the steps in the articleto open a ticket, this is a most efficient way to fix the issue in your environment, they can check for problems in the back end of SharePoint.

Sorry for not being able to help you on our side. However, I would like to provide my help, I  wrote a summary on this issue in the private message, please provide the summary to the support agent to help him speed up on the investigation.

Thank you for understanding.

Regards,

Jazlyn

Answer 2

Hi Jazlyn,

I’ve now tested it and as per below image, the PowerShell Command provides direct access to the object with “Edit” permission.

The normal “Share” option is still not providing the “Edit” permission as evident by the share link that appears in the “links giving access” section.

The command I ran was:

Set-PnPListItemPermission -List 'SPI Portal' -Identity 62 -User (internal email)-AddRole 'Edit' 

See screen shot below

(However we can’t use the Powershell option as a solution). I note that sharing at folder level to edit access worked for about 5 months, and stopped working randomly.

We are running an audit report to see if any site settings were changed by a designer, or inadvertently by an owner, however this report will only show changes for the last 3 months, and this problem has been happening for 4 months now.

Thank you for looking further into this issue!

 

Answer 3

Hi Rechel,

Did you try the commends in my previous reply? If you encounter some problems, please do not hesitate to reply to me.

Regards,

Jazlyn

Answer 4

Hi Rechel,

Based on your description, when you share the file to specific people with the "Edit" permission, the permission will automatically change to "View Only" permission.

To determine if this is the cause of the browser or the SharePoint Server, I wrote some commend and could you please have a try? Here are the steps:

1. Open Windows PowerShell, you can search it in the search bar.
2. Install Module SharePoint Online according to this article, run the commend:

Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline.

3. Connect SharePoint-pnp according to this article, run the commend:

Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://xxxxxxxxxxx.sharepoint.com/ Set-PnPListItemPermission -list Documents -Identity 1 -User '@xxxxxxxxxxxx.com' -AddRole 'View Only'

"**https://xxxxxxxxxxx.sharepoint.com/**" means the site where you want to share files.

"Documents"  means the library name you put the files.

Number "1" means the file Id, there is a column called "Id", you can add an Id column in view to see what the file's Id is. Go library settings>choose a library view>under Columns, check ID>click OK, then the file ID column will display in the library.

"******@xxxxxxxxxxxx.com" is the address you want to share to.

"View Only" is the permission level.

Regards,

Jazlyn