Securing specific files or folders within SharePoint

Overview

This article is intended to guide SharePoint users through the process of adding additional file security through managing access to file(s) within your SharePoint site documents.

Process

Please Note: For this example below, we will be securing ignore.docx within the 1 folder to illustrate the process.

Go into your SharePoint site and select Documents

SharePoint Documents folder

Select the More options menu (three vertical dots) alongside your desired file or folder and click Manage access.

More Options menu with Manage access highlighted

The Manage access panel will appear on the right side of the screen. You can manage your links that give access, as well as Direct Access. In this example, I want to disallow any visitor access. I will select the down arrow next to my Visitors group and select Stop sharing.

The Manage access panel in SharePoint with Visitors group highlighted

A prompt will confirm that I want to remove access to this group. Select Remove to proceed.

Click Remove to proceed.

As a result, the Manage Access panel will no longer include the Visitor group for the 1 folder. Visitors to my SharePoint site will no longer have access to any files associated with this folder.

The visitors group is gone from the Manage access panel

The content of the 1 folder is a document titled ignore.docx.

Documents view showing the contents of the 1 folder with ignore.docx highlighted

Ginamarie is not a member of the SharePoint site. When Ginamarie searches for ignore.docx once the 1 folder is secured, this error appears. This is the desired state.

Ginamarie's search results window in Office 365 Online.

Additional Resources

For additional information, please consult our knowledge base articles about SharePoint.

Details

Article ID: 140407
Created
Mon 2/28/22 1:19 PM
Modified
Thu 7/6/23 2:25 PM

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