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is it possible to restrict access to a subfolder without affecting parent folder?

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Philip Marshall

hi all, I have a user who would like to create a subfolder within their  departmental folder hierarchy but restrict access to a small group of collaborators because the information is confidential. So for example,  all of the department might have access to the parent folder with their permissions granted through being a member of a group or being individually invited to collaborate, but for the subfolder there would only be a few members of staff who had access. The advice given in  the support pages is that any changes to collaboration on a subfolder will affect the collaboration on the parent folder as well. Does that mean it is not possible to have a subfolder which has a  much smaller group of collaborators  without affecting the parent folder? This type of requirement is something i would expect to crop up pretty often.

Thanks for your advice

Phil

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Comments

7 comments

Date Votes
  • Aira

    Hi there, 

    Welcome to the Box Community! 

    This issue should be best addressed by our Product Support. I have created a ticket for you and kindly check your email for updates. 

    Thanks!

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  • Neil West

    Hi, i was just looking for the answer to this question too. Please can you share the answer so I can review the same option for our parent/sub folder restrictions too.

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  • Anna Coffey

    Hi: Can you share the answer to this question? This is a common request.

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  • Philip Marshall

    Hi Anna and Neil, in response to the following query extracted from my original post:

    "The advice given in the support pages is that any changes to collaboration on a subfolder will affect the collaboration on the parent folder as well. Does that mean it is not possible to have a subfolder which has a much smaller group of collaborators without affecting the parent folder?",

    the support team provided the following answer:

    "That is correct, you cannot change the subfolder permission as it will affect the parent folder. A workaround for this is to move the subfolder to the root level."

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  • Ojai Oil Company

    You can have a group with Viewer access at the parent level and then create another group (or individuals) and supply them Editor access to only the subfolder. 

    If you have given the group Editor access to the parent folder, then you can not restrict a subfolder to only Viewer (or no) access.

    I believe this permission limitation is intentional by Box, but I find this limitation to Box's waterfall permissions structure to be almost annoying enough to get me to switch to another platform.

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  • Alex Scothern

    I'm seeing so many community posts about this.  It's absolutely mind-blowing that there isn't yet an ability to manage permissions per subfolder. Deviating from a logical and traditional organization of folders, having to make additional parent folders is insane. 

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  • Chris Bradshaw

    Has this changed in the last year? It's become inportant to our team as well.

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