Sharepoint 2007 : Managing Security - Assign Permissions on a List or Library

Change a User’s or Group’s Permissions on a File or List Item

Solution: To change permissions on a file or item, open the manage permissions page for that file or item and click the name of the user or group for which you want to change the permissions. This redirects you to a page that enables you to select permissions for that user or group (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Changing a user’s or group’s permissions.

Here, you can select one or more permission levels. For example, if you select Contribute and Approve, the user will be able to both edit the document or list item and approve it, but will not be able to set the permission on the file or item. When you are done, click OK.

Scenario/Problem: You want to change the permissions on a list or library. For example, you want to add a user as a reader or as an author to the list or library.

Solution: To assign permissions on a list or document library, you need to get to the manage permissions page of that list or document library.

On this page, you might be able to immediately change permissions, or you might have to first disconnect the permission inheritance for that list or library. Permission inheritance is on by default for all lists and libraries in SharePoint. It means that the list or library inherits its permissions from the site that it is in and has the exact same permission sets. If the permissions for the site change, the permissions for the list are updated automatically.

While inheritance is active, it is not possible to set a different permission level to the list or library (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The manage permissions screen for a list when inheritance is enabled.

To disconnect the inheritance from the site, click Actions and choose Edit Permissions.

After you click the Edit Permissions option, a prompt appears, asking you to confirm that you want to disconnect the permissions inheritance from the site. The prompt also explains that after you do so, changes to the permissions of the site will not affect the list or library you are managing. This means, for example, that if a certain user is granted permissions to edit files or items in the site after the inheritance was disconnected, that user will not have the same permission levels on the list or library unless you explicitly change them on the list or library.

If you are sure that you want to manage the permissions for this list or library separately from the permission of the site, click OK. The page then allows you to manage the permissions for that list or library (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. The manage permissions page when permission inheritance from the site is disconnected.

To add a user and assign permission, click the New button in the toolbar. Selecting New redirects you to a page where you can search for the user or security group that you want to assign permissions to and choose what permissions that user or group will be granted.

Under the Add Users section, either type the name (or part of a name) or email address for the user or group you want to add, or click the address book icon to open the people search dialog, where you can search for people by typing their name or part of it.

You can add more than one user or group at a time by separating the names with a semicolon. This is similar to when you are writing an email in Microsoft Outlook and you choose the person you want to send the email to.

If you use the Check Name icon, and there is no exact match to the name you entered, a red underline appears beneath the name. Click the name to open a menu that shows users who are a close match to that name or select to remove the name.

For example, typing John and clicking the Check Name box results in a red line under John. Clicking John shows that there is a user called John Doe. If that is the user you are looking for, click that name. If not, either click Remove to delete John from the text box or click More Names to open the search dialog.

The search dialog enables you to search for people. Just type part of the name of the person or group that you want, and click the Search icon. A list of possible matches appears. To select one of them, double-click the name, and it is added to the box at the bottom of the dialog. After you have chosen all the users and groups, click OK to close the dialog and return to the Add Users page.

After you have found the users and/or groups that you want to add to the list, you can select what permissions they should have by selecting one or more of the check boxes in the list of permissions under Give Users Permission Directly . Selecting options here gives the users the permissions you selected. As before, the higher permission level wins; so if you give someone the permission to Read and to Contribute, the user can change the list as well as read the items in it because of the Contribute setting.

Alternatively, you can add the users or groups to a SharePoint group. This means they will get whatever permission level the SharePoint group has. This is a useful mechanism to control permissions; for example, if you decide that all the users who have Contribute (edit) permissions on a document should now have read-only access, you would have to edit each and every user’s permissions. Instead, using SharePoint groups, you can add users to a SharePoint group that has the Contribute permission level, and when a change is required, you change the permissions only on that SharePoint group, and not to each user separately. You can add both users and security groups to the SharePoint group.

To add users or groups to a SharePoint group, click the Add Users to a SharePoint Group option, and then select from the drop-down list what SharePoint group you want to add the users and/or security groups to .

The last option on this page enables you to send email to the users, telling them that they have permissions on the list or library. You have the option to select not to send the email, or if you select to send it, you can change the title and body of the email.