SharePoint Troubleshooting: User With Limited Access Can View Lists in Quick Launch

  • Article

Background

In SharePoint 2010, Limited Access is defined as

"Allows access to shared resources in the Web site so that the users can access an item within the site. 

Designed to be combined with fine-grained permissions to give users access to a specific list, document library, folder, list item, or document, without giving them access to the entire site. 

Cannot be customized or deleted."

Issue

A Site Owner broke permissions on List B and added a user with Contribute permissions.  This added the user with Limited Access at the Site level.  The user was able to see List A in the Quick Launch.  The expectation was that the user should not see List A. 

Site:

  • List A - inherits permission
  • List B - broken permission

Solution

There is a feature called ViewFormPagesLockdown, which seems intended for sites with Anonymous users.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ecm/2007/05/11/anonymous-users-forms-pages-and-the-lockdown-feature/

The last reply on this thread helped makes the connection between this feature and the quick launch behavior.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/cbded2f0-a040-4384-9efe-992c355adbfb/visibility-of-list-link-in-quick-launch-depends-of-user-permission?forum=sharepointadmin

Enabling the viewformpageslockdown feature hides List A on the Quick Launch, as expected.

PowerShell

$lockdown = Get-SPFeature viewformpageslockdown

Enable-SPFeature $lockdown -Url  http://contoso/site/

Keywords

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