Forum Discussion
SharePoint Online hide "site contents" and "site usage" page (modern sites)
This is very important to us, as well, and is driving us to look at alternatives that we would rather not pursue.
Ann_M Yeah this is kinda bad. Anyone with read permissions on modern sites her has access to all the admin functions on the menus, but jsut read access on the pages. What in the world is going on.
- rpawaAug 23, 2019Copper Contributor
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I was running into this exact issue. Trying to setup a very strict "Read only" permission group for our Sharepoint site. I thought I had something working, and then found the gear icon had both "Site contents" and "Site Usage" listed. And, when I went to "Site Contents", I could do anything an admin can do (checkout, checkin, download, delete, upload).
I've made mitigated a big part of the issue, but I don't think it's good enough yet.
I found the "Style Resource Readers" group had Contribute permissions at the highest level (in addition to "Read" and "View Only"). Removing the Contribute permission from this group at least removed "Site Usage" from the gear, and when I went to the contents I could no longer checkout, checkin, delete or upload; but I could still get to the Site Contents, open the files and download them. This is not desired for a "Read only" user.
Next I'm going to try using the "View only" permission instead of the "Read" permission.
p.s. I just noticed as what should be a Read only user I can pull up the "Shared With" window, and share the site with presumably anyone! Not something I want them to be able to do. The window doesn't let them select the appropriate group...that's somehow much scarier, I have no idea what group that user would be put into.
Update: I have a solution!
Short answer: use "Restricted Read" instead of "Read" or "View Only", and also set the Style Resource Readers group to "Restricted Read".
When I used "View Only", Site contents were still available but files could no longer be downloaded, that was a substantial improvement but not quite all the way to what I want.
I then tried "Restricted Read", and now "Site Contents" is removed from the gear icon. "Shared With..." is still listed as an option, but clicking it results in an error and the sharing window does not come up. Pages still seem to work, and I don't seem to be able to edit list items. So this is a workable solution for me. I believe "Restricted Read" is a standard permissions group for SharePoint, in case it isn't, you can create it yourself by adding a new permission level with the following items checked in the "Permissions" section: View Items, Open Items, View Pages, and Open.
I have not experimented with creating a special permission level to pare this down even further (i.e. I don't know exactly what those permissions do, and what would happen if I took them away).
- Jennifer1180Nov 27, 2019Copper Contributor
rpawa Can you walk me through how to change my current group members permission setting to "Restricted Read" instead of "Read" or "View Only", and also how to set the Style Resource Readers group to "Restricted Read".
- Maciej KukułkaMar 12, 2020Copper Contributor
Any news about new solutions?
I need to give access to site homepage and specific folders in Site Contents. But I doesn't want users to mess around in whole Site Contents.
- Mario MercierSep 23, 2019Copper ContributorWill this solution also allow users to access and complete forms?
- PierreLiecAug 22, 2019Copper Contributor
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Hello is there any news on this topic? how to hide site contents and usage?
Because it is very annoying to have these functions accessible to user with read access.
Kind regards,
Pierre.