Restrict editing on a group of documents

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I know I can go into each document and restrict editing, but I have a large folder of documents I’d like to set the same way. Is there a way to do that? I’m on Office 365 E3 and 2016 on the desktop.

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Depending on your situation, perhaps you could set the folder permissions to read-only, to prevent changes being made by certain users, using location right-click>properties>security>permissions.

If it is a case of restricting certain users from making changes, this answers.microsoft.com page may help:
O365 Groups – Can I restrict access to certain files?

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Shoot. Posted this earlier but don’t see it. Sorry if it dupes.

So, that sounds like a great idea Kirsty. Gives me a clue how to handle part of what I want. Here’s a quick backgrounder.

1. I’ve created dozens of position agreements (PA) for my company, all based on a word template. These PA’s will become templates for the type of job a person has.
2. I want the documents all to be editable only by a certain group and require track changes (thus my Restrict Access request)
3. We need to allow HR to grab one of the templates for each employee and have them add a few bits and eSign and then store in their personnel file (everything is in Teams/Sharepoint)
4. For every employee development meeting this document will need to be viewed and perhaps notes taken in it.

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That sounds like you might need a combination of read-only access for the completed documents, and limited editable sections in the templates. I’m assuming they aren’t stored in the same folders…

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The originals are stored in one folder but once HR takes one to become live for a specific person that one is store in his private folder.

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Is this a corporate network share system? Using Active Directory?

If yes, let me know and will post some guidelines that will solve this for you.

If a peer to peer network, it’s a lot harder.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

1 user thanked author for this post.

Kirsty

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This is Office365 in the cloud. Yes, part of that is Azure AD.

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Is the folder in OneDrive or SharePoint or somewhere on your PC?

--Joe

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[WSbdesilva]

Sharepoint, in a default group site setup by MS Teams.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by WSbdesilva.

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SharePoint security can be very confusing.
Is the folder accessed by guests or users?
Are users members of the Team?
Do you have a SharePoint admin?

--Joe

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Hi Joe. I fully agree.

re:

Is the folder accessed by guests or users? BOTH
Are users members of the Team? SOME
Do you have a SharePoint admin? YES, BUT NEITHER OF US IS STRONG.

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Here’s a step-by-step for restricting SharePoint online folders for your users.

You’ll need to set at least one user with full write/read permissions so you can manage the contents. All others can be read-only so they can copy documents out to their working desktop.

The tutorial is for an education scenario, but the steps are the same.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-folders-to-create-read-only-files-for-students-or-other-team-members-0e7791d7-8c9c-4749-9bca-984289477988

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Thanks NetDef. That’s pretty much what I know about SP security so far. It’s not working for everyone and I’m getting close to the bottom of it. I just wish there was a way to do the Word based restrict editing on a bunch of files at once!

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