Controlling Lists in SharePoint
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In this conclusion to a four-part article series on lists in SharePoint, you will learn how to control access to lists, edit list pages, and more. It is excerpted from
Essential SharePoint 2007, Second Edition, A Practical Guide for Users, Administrators and Developers, written by Jeff Webb (O'Reilly, 2008; ISBN: 0596514077). Copyright © 2008 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.
Controlling Access to Lists
Lists inherit permissions from their parent site. You can restrict access to an entire list or to items within a list.
To restrict who has access to a list:
- On the list toolbar, click Settings -> List Settings, and click “Permissions for this list” under the Permissions and Management heading in the middle of the page. SharePoint displays the Permissions page.
- Click Actions -> Edit Permissions. SharePoint displays a warning that you are creating unique permissions.
- Click OK to proceed. SharePoint changes the display of the Permissions page so that you can edit the permissions.
- Select a user or group and click Actions -> Remove User Permissions to remove access to the list for those users as shown in Figure 4-19.
Figure 4-19. Restricting access to a list
Figure 4-19 shows removing permissions for all users except the Administrator. That means only the Administrator can see the list; it is hidden from everyone else and if someone tries to access it, SharePoint displays an Error: Access Denied page (see Figure 4-20). Those two points confuse some folks:
In SharePoint, you generally can’t see what you can’t access. That means some lists, libraries, and sites may not appear on the Quick Launch or link bar for some users. That makes instructing users interesting sometimes!
The Access Denied page lets you sign in as a different user. Most folks have only one account, so that makes little sense to them. But when you’re helping someone, it’s handy to sign in as yourself, grant that person access, and then sign out by closing the browser (be sure to do that so the user doesn’t proceed with your credentials).
Figure 4-20. What the user sees if he/she doesn't have permissions to access something
You can also restrict access to individual items in a list. To do that:
Click Manage Permissions on the list item’s Edit menu, as shown in Figure 4-21.
Follow the same steps as for restricting access to a list.
Notice that I’ve only talked about restricting access. Actually, you can increase permissions as well, but that’s a much less common practice. In general, permissions are more restricted the deeper you go into a site hierarchy.
Figure 4-21. Use the edit menu to restrict access to individual items
Part of the reason for that is simplicity—it’s way too hard to remember how permissions are set if they don’t follow the physical structure. The other reason is visibility: as I mentioned above, SharePoint hides restricted items, so if a user has read access to a list within a site that she can’t see...it’s very hard for her to find that list.
Next: Editing List Pages >>
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 This article is excerpted from Essential SharePoint 2007, Second Edition, A Practical Guide for Users, Administrators and Developers, written by Jeff Webb (O'Reilly, 2008; ISBN: 0596514077). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.
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