Changing the permissions on a subfolder in Teams (SharePoint Online)
Changing Folder Permissions
Warning! - Altering folder and sub-folder permissions within Teams and SharePoint Online effectively breaks the inheritance of the item acted upon. This means that changes made higher up the folder structure will not affect that item(s). For example, if you later add a new staff member to the Team then you will also have to add them to the permission set of any folder that you have broken inherence on. we would recommend that you use Private Channels within your Team to limit access to specific data instead. A guide on doing this can be found here (https://servicedesk.sensescotland.org.uk/a/solutions/articles/15000032767 ).
If you require to limit access to specific folders or subfolders within your MS Team site then you need to undertake the following steps:
- Open Teams and access the relevant Team and Channel
- Click on Files and then Open in SharePoint, this will take you to the SharePoint Online site for your Team.
- Select the special folder.
- Click Ellipsis…>select Details>click Manage access.
- Click Advanced.
- As you want to custom the permission of subfolder, select Stop Inheriting Permissions.
- Then you can Grant permissions or remove user permission.
- Refresh the page
In the above example all team members can see folders Parent 1, Parent 2, Child 1-2, Child 2-1 and Child 2-2.
But only Anita can see the content of folder Child 1-1.
If you wished, on the other hand, for Anita only to see the contents of folder Child 1-1 and nothing else then you would remove the iTrent Team Members group from all folders and add in the names of the specific people that have the right of access.
This is where it get further complicated. in order to see a sub-folder a user must be given access to all parent folders within that tree. so, if you wish them to access the parent folder but not see any content within the parent folder then the same permission changes would need to be made for any files within the parent folder.
TIP - It is probably easiest to think of things in terms of removing permissions rather than granting them. At the very highest level of the Team every member can access the team site. To limit specific folders you are essentially selecting the folder and removing general access and replacing it with unique individual access. This must be done for every folder that you wish to be hidden from a particular person or group.