Returning employee access

Question

A returning employee whose access was removed when they left still has access to previous resources and I cannot see them listed to remove.

Has anyone come across this behaviour before, this is to do with SharePoint online sites and the particular access was a shared folder within a SharePoint site.

Answer 1

Dear Sam,

Thank you for posting back and clarifying the situation.

It seems that you want to know why the returning employee whose access was removed when they left still have access to previous resources in SharePoint Online site.

It may because that the returning employee's access to previous resource has not been completely removed.

If you still want to remove his access, may I know if you have tried using following PowerShell commands?

Remove-SPOUser -Site https://fabrikam.sharepoint.com -LoginName ******@fabrikam.com

*Note: Replace the *****@fabrikam.com placeholder with the returning employee.

For reference: Using the SharePoint Online Management Shell

If my understanding of the scenario is not consistent with yours, feel free to point it out, I will continue helping you.

Thanks for your time and cooperation! Hope you have a nice day.

Sincerely,

Tina | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

Hi Tina,

Apologies, I haven't explained myself well enough so the returning user has member access to the site (Automatically assigned by a department Access Package)

There is however a folder which has had member and view access removed so its only owners and users with explicit access to that folder.

The returning user used to have explicit access to that folder but this was removed when they left.

They have come back to the company and without being given the explicit access they can still see the folder and its contents.

Thanks

Sam

Answer 3

Dear Sam Regan,

Greetings! Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

Per your description, a returning employee whose access was removed still has access to previous resources, you want to remove his access.

I'd like to help you, please let us cooperate, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

If my understanding of the scenario is right, may I know if you have removed the employee from the UserInfo list to completely remove him from SharePoint? 

If not, you may try steps below:

Browse to each SharePoint site that the employee visited, browse to the site and edit the URL by adding the following string to the end of it:      /_layouts/15/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=0

For example, the full URL will resemble the following:

https://fabrikam.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/people.aspx?membershipGroupId=0

Select the person from the list, and then on the Actions menu, select Delete Users from Site Collection.

If it doesn't work, you may try to use the SharePoint Online Management Shell to remove the employee from SharePoint. For detailed steps, please refer to this article Remove users from SharePoint - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn

If issue persists, I understand how frustrating this situation can be and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused.

May I know if the issue happens to a specific employee? And does this issue happen in a specific SharePoint site?

If my understanding of the scenario is not consistent with yours, feel free to point it out, I will continue helping you.

Thanks for your time and cooperation! We hope you stay safe and healthy always.

Sincerely,

Tina | Microsoft Community Moderator