Issue: Attempting to edit permissions on an individual document in a library brings up the permissions editor for the library itself.
While working within a SharePoint library I pulled up the permissions (Manage Permissions) for a single document so I could edit them; I didn’t take any action and was called away from my desk. When I returned (approximately 30 minutes later) I picked up where I had left off (the document permissions page was still up for the individual document). I first inherited the library permissions as the permissions had previously been broken to secure the document individually. I then selected Actions \ Edit Permissions and the resulting screen that displayed was the permissions for the library itself instead of just that document. Fortunately, I recognized that it was the permissions for the library and I backed out and did not make any changes. Unfortunately, the reason I am working on permissions on individual documents in this library in the first place is that one of our content editors had accidentally removed a permission from the library itself while working on permissions for an individual document. I can only assume that the exact same thing happened to him but he didn’t notice that the document designation at the top of the page Permissions: <Document Name> had changed to Permissions: <Library Name>. I cannot duplicate this behavior but will be looking for it much more closely now.
We originally had an issue come up with the permissions for this library being edited “accidentally” by a content editor shortly after deployment 3 years ago and it just resurfaced about a month ago (which we are still cleaning up from), and now it has just happened again, only this time I got to witness it and not make any changes to the library permissions. How can we prevent this from occurring in the future? I cannot figure out a way to give people the ability to edit the permissions on the documents within a library without them also having the ability to edit permissions for the library itself. All of our users use the pull-down edit menu to access permissions for individual documents (Manage Permissions) and do not navigate through the Settings menu item for the library (Settings \ Document Library Settings \ Permissions for this document library). One other thing that could assist with preventing changes to the library permission in the future might be to change the font of the displayed Title for the library permissions to be a bold red font that stands out to call people’s attention to it but I am not sure if this is possible or what would be involved. We are running WSS 3.0. Any thoughts, suggestions, or assistance is much appreciated.
Jason