Forum Discussion
Adobe is bypassing Document Library permissions to View Only.
We want to create a space for only viewing PDFs and prohibiting downloading. I've created a document library with permissions for Everyone to View Only. I can verify that with the built in PDF reader...
There used to be a permission level called "View" that would only allow you to view Office documents and PDFs. However, with the rollout of SharePoint Advanced Management, they appear to have removed this permission level without mentioning it to anyone. If you have an entire document library to apply this to. . . you have to purchase a SharePoint Advanced Management license and run some PowerShell to stop downloads. The license runs commercial tenants $3/user/month right now.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/advanced-management
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/advanced-management
- That's odd. I currently have View Only permissions for Everyone without having to jump through any hoops.
I don't understand what this is. They're pay-walling features that we've previously been using?- Can you do it with anything new? I ran into this with some folks I have been assisting with their Stream classic migration where they needed to restrict downloads. We had it all setup and it worked one week. . . then the next week all of the sudden it didn't work. . . and we looked and the permissions had changed from View to Read. It was very frustrating. Then, when I tried to create a new permission level - even in my dev tenant - the View only options (no download) are all missing. You can't select them anymore. I'm seeing this in Education and Commercial tenants. If you are in GCC, maybe it hasn't hit you yet? Or maybe it is just rolling out as I discovered it over the past 4 weeks or so.
- I just created a new document library in a subsite > went to Library Settings > Permissions for this Document Library > removed Inherit Permissions, > Grant Permissions > then "invited" "Everyone" with the permission level "View Only".
Does this Microsoft Syntex remove the ability for Admins to set permission levels that prohibit downloads? I don't have the time to look into it now but from the first five minutes of a M365 Voice video I saw, it seemed like this was the case.
