Permission levels on Box follow a "waterfall" design in which individuals have access only to the folder they are invited into and any subfolders beneath it. You can also be invited to individual files.
For example, a user invited to be a collaborator on the Box Reports parent folder can view this folder and all subfolders (Design, Finance, Legal, and so on).
However, a user invited to be a collaborator in the Marketing subfolder only can view only the Marketing, Approved, and In-Progress folders., but not the Design, Finance, and Legal folders.
If an individual is a collaborator on a parent folder, the access level is the same for all its subfolders. Changing the access level for any subfolder causes the individual's access level also to change for the parent folder and all its subfolders. The system displays a message stating this information when changing someone's access level in a subfolder instead of in the parent folder.
For example, if a user is invited into the Box Reports folder as an Editor, you could not change their access to Viewer in the Marketing folder without changing their access to Viewer in the Box Reports folder as well. Changing their access to Viewer in the Marketing folder causes their access level to change to Viewer for the Box Reports folder and all its subfolders.
You can, however, give a collaborator a higher access level at a subfolder. To do this, first invite the collaborator to the subfolder, then invite the collaborator to the parent folder. For example, you could invite John to the Marketing folder as an Co-Owner, then invite him to the Box Reports folder as a Viewer.
If you’d like to send a document to someone who is not a collaborator in the folder, use a shared link. The recipient of the shared link can preview or download the document.