SharePoint permissions determine who can see, edit, or manage content across your sites, libraries, and lists. Get them right, and information flows to the people who need it while staying protected from those who don’t. Get them wrong, and you’ll face either frustrated employees who can’t access what they need or security risks from overly permissive access.
The permissions system is powerful but complex. Understanding how SharePoint permission levels, groups, and inheritance work helps you design access strategies that balance security with usability.
This guide covers SharePoint permission fundamentals, best practices for managing access, and common mistakes that lead to permission chaos.
How SharePoint Permissions Work
SharePoint permissions operate through three connected concepts: permission levels, groups, and inheritance.
Permission levels define what actions users can take. Full Control allows everything—editing content, managing settings, controlling permissions. Edit lets users add, modify, and delete content. Read provides view-only access. Contribute sits between Edit and Read with some modification rights.
Groups collect users who need similar access. Rather than assigning permissions to individuals, you assign permission levels to groups, then add users to appropriate groups. SharePoint sites come with default groups: Owners (Full Control), Members (Edit), and Visitors (Read).
Inheritance means that permissions flow down from parent to child. A document library inherits permissions from its site. A folder inherits from its library. Individual files inherit from their folder. This inheritance makes permission management scalable—set permissions once at the site level, and everything within the site follows those rules.
You can break inheritance when needed, setting unique permissions on a library, folder, or item. This creates exceptions to the inherited pattern.
Default SharePoint Permission Levels
SharePoint includes several built-in permission levels:
Full Control grants complete access including permission management. Site collection administrators and site owners typically have this level.
Design allows viewing, adding, updating, deleting, approving, and customizing. This level suits users who manage site appearance and structure.
Edit permits adding, editing, and deleting list items and documents. Standard team members often work at this level.
Contribute allows adding and editing items but with some limitations compared to Edit. The distinction matters in specific scenarios.
Read provides view-only access. Users can see content but cannot modify anything.
Limited Access is automatically assigned when someone has access to a specific item but not the parent site. You don’t assign this directly—SharePoint creates it when needed.
View Only allows viewing pages and documents but not downloading. This level works for sensitive documents that should be viewable but not copied.
You can create custom permission levels combining specific capabilities, though this adds complexity and is rarely necessary for most organizations.
SharePoint Groups and Best Practices
Groups are the key to manageable permissions. Instead of assigning Jane to this library and Bob to that folder, you add Jane and Bob to the appropriate group and let group membership control access.
Default groups cover most needs. Owners manage the site. Members contribute content. Visitors view content. Use these groups as your starting point.
Custom groups make sense when you have distinct user categories with different needs. A project site might have a “Project Managers” group with Edit access and a “Stakeholders” group with Read access. A department site might have groups aligned with teams or roles.
Microsoft 365 groups and Teams add another dimension. When you create a Microsoft Team, a Microsoft 365 group is created automatically. This group can be used for SharePoint permissions, keeping team membership synchronized across tools.
Best practice: Use groups, not individuals. Assigning permissions directly to users creates maintenance nightmares. When someone leaves the organization or changes roles, you’ll hunt through sites to update their access. With groups, you just remove them from the appropriate groups.
Best practice: Keep group structure simple. Too many groups with overlapping purposes create confusion. Start with default groups and add custom groups only when genuinely needed.
Understanding Permission Inheritance
Inheritance is both SharePoint’s greatest permission feature and its biggest source of confusion.
By default, everything inherits. When you create a site within a site collection, it inherits permissions from the site collection. When you create a library, it inherits from the site. When you upload a document, it inherits from the library.
This inheritance makes administration efficient. Change site permissions, and the change flows to all content within that site. No need to update dozens of libraries individually.
Breaking inheritance creates unique permissions on a specific object. When you break inheritance on a library, it stops following site permissions and has its own independent permission settings. Changes to site permissions no longer affect that library.
Common reasons to break inheritance:
- A library contains sensitive documents that only certain people should access
- A folder within a library needs restricted access
- A single document requires different permissions than its library
The problem with breaking inheritance is management complexity. Unique permissions don’t update when parent permissions change. Over time, sites accumulate broken inheritance in scattered places, creating inconsistent access patterns and administrative burden.
Best practice: Minimize broken inheritance. Structure your sites so that content with different permission needs lives in different sites or libraries rather than using unique permissions on folders and files. When you must break inheritance, document where and why.
Common Permission Mistakes
Giving everyone Full Control. When frustrated users report access problems, it’s tempting to grant excessive permissions. Resist this. Full Control includes permission management—users can change permissions themselves, potentially giving access to people who shouldn’t have it.
Permissions by individual rather than groups. As mentioned above, this creates maintenance problems. Always use groups.
Too much broken inheritance. A site with unique permissions on many libraries, folders, and files becomes impossible to audit and maintain. Restructure content organization rather than layering unique permissions.
Ignoring external sharing settings. SharePoint supports sharing with people outside your organization. Make sure your external sharing policies align with your security requirements. What’s enabled at the tenant level? What should be allowed on specific sites?
Not auditing permissions. Permissions drift over time. People join groups and never leave. Unique permissions get created for temporary needs and forgotten. Regular audits catch these issues before they become security risks.
Managing Permissions on Libraries and Lists
While site-level permissions provide the foundation, you’ll sometimes need to adjust access for specific libraries or lists.
To view or modify library permissions, open the library settings and find “Permissions for this document library.” You’ll see whether the library inherits permissions or has unique permissions, and you can manage access from there.
Stopping inheritance copies current permissions to the library, making them independent of the site. You can then add or remove groups, change permission levels, or manage access as needed.
For lists that collect sensitive information—performance reviews, salary data, confidential requests—unique permissions may be necessary. Just be intentional about it and document your permission structure.
Content managed through systems like PIMS often requires thoughtful permission strategies to ensure the right project stakeholders can access relevant documents while maintaining appropriate confidentiality.
Folder-Level Permissions: Use With Caution
SharePoint allows setting unique permissions on individual folders within a library. While this seems convenient, it often creates more problems than it solves.
When you set folder permissions, you break inheritance at that folder level. Users with library access might suddenly find folders they can’t open. The permission structure becomes invisible to most users—they just experience mysterious access denied messages.
Folder permissions also complicate management. With unique permissions scattered across folders, there’s no single place to understand who can access what. Auditing becomes tedious, and cleanup requires folder-by-folder review.
Better alternatives to folder permissions:
- Create separate libraries for content with different access needs
- Use metadata and views to organize content instead of folders
- Create separate sites for truly distinct permission requirements
If you must use folder permissions, limit them to top-level folders and document your permission structure clearly.
Auditing and Managing SharePoint Permissions
Healthy permission management requires ongoing attention, not just initial setup.
Run permission reports. SharePoint provides permission checking tools. For a site, you can review who has access and at what level. For users, you can check what sites and content they can access.
Review group membership. Are the right people in each group? Are former employees or changed roles cleaned up? Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) groups can help automate membership through dynamic rules.
Check for broken inheritance. Periodically scan for content with unique permissions. Evaluate whether the unique permissions are still needed or if content can be restructured.
Monitor external sharing. If your organization shares content externally, review who has been granted access and whether those shares are still appropriate.
Large organizations often use third-party tools for comprehensive permission reporting and management. Native SharePoint tools work for smaller environments but become unwieldy at scale.
Permission Strategies for Different Scenarios
Team collaboration sites. Use the default Owners/Members/Visitors model. Team members join the Members group. Stakeholders who need visibility join Visitors. Keep it simple.
Department sites. Consider groups aligned with teams or roles within the department. A Marketing site might have Marketing-Owners, Marketing-Contributors, and Marketing-Viewers.
Project sites. Project-specific groups work well for defined project teams. When the project ends, removing or archiving the site cleanly removes access.
Organization-wide communication sites. These typically grant read access broadly (often “Everyone except external users”) with editing limited to communication owners.
Sensitive content. Isolate highly sensitive content in dedicated sites with restricted membership rather than hiding it through unique permissions within broader sites.
External Sharing and Guest Access
SharePoint supports sharing content with people outside your organization—vendors, clients, partners, or collaborators. External sharing settings control whether this is allowed and how it works.
Tenant-level settings establish the boundaries. Administrators configure whether external sharing is enabled, what authentication is required, and what content types can be shared externally.
Site-level settings can be more restrictive than tenant settings but not more permissive. A site can disable external sharing even if the tenant allows it.
Sharing links let users share specific files or folders with external recipients. Options include links that require sign-in, links for specific people, or anonymous links (if enabled).
When external sharing is enabled, governance becomes especially important. Track what’s been shared externally, with whom, and whether that access is still appropriate. External sharing that made sense for a project six months ago may no longer be needed.
Connecting Permissions to Your Intranet Strategy
Permissions shape the intranet experience. Who sees which content? Who can contribute where? Thoughtful permission design supports a modern intranet that delivers relevant content to employees without overwhelming them with information they don’t need.
Consider how your intranet structure maps to your organizational structure and what content visibility makes sense at each level. The goal is appropriate access—enough openness for collaboration and information sharing, enough restriction to protect sensitive information and maintain clarity.
An intranet that requires employees to request access constantly frustrates users. An intranet where everyone sees everything creates noise and potential security issues. Find the balance that fits your organization’s culture and security requirements.
Your intranet homepage should surface content users have permission to see, creating a personalized experience based on their role and group memberships.
Struggling with SharePoint permissions that have grown complicated over time? Let’s talk about cleaning up your permission model and establishing sustainable governance.