How To Manage Or Edit List Or Library Permission On SharePoint Online

This is an article about a very important frequent task of any SharePoint administrator, which is assigning permissions to the list or library available on the SharePoint site or the page.

As an administrator or owner of a library or list, we can change the permissions to let authorized people access the data. By default, all sites, lists, and libraries in a site collection inherit permissions settings from the site that is directly above them in the site hierarchy. It means the site collection list or Library will be inherited to the subsite of the same.

Now, we will start working on list or library permissions and settings for SharePoint Online.

Today, I will be working on the topics given below for the SharePoint List and Library

  • Access the Permissions page.
  • Break permission inheritance in SP Online.
  • Assign the unique permissions for the particular users.
  • Change the permissions levels in the list or Library.
  • Remove the unique permissions from any of the List.
  • Restore an inheritance to delete all the unique permissions.

Access the permission page

  • To access the permission page for SharePoint site List or Library, select site setting from gear box on the top of the page.
  • Now, click on any of the list or Library and open the same, and make sur, we will have some of the data to show the permission.


  • Now, click Library setting from the library ribbon page and select permission for the Document Library.


Break permission inheritance in SP Online
  • Now, click on Permission ribbon on the top of the page and select Stop inheritance permission.


  • Once, we click on stop inheritance, it will ask us for the confirmation. Click OK and now we can see an inheritance page is stopped.


Assign the unique permissions for the particular users & change permissions levels in list or Library
  • We will assign a unique permission for one of the users on SharePoint.

  • Follow the same points as mentioned above, now we will be on the permissions page, where we need to select Grant Permission from Permission Ribbon.


  • Here, type the user name and we can share with the same user from the share page Wizard and select the user from Invite option.


  • Now, we will add some more options from share document and library, which is available by default.

  • We will share the library with some unique change permissions levels in list or library, click show option from share wizard and select any from the default permission level. Refer to the screenshots given below.


  • Once you select the permission level, click OK Share button, one of the emails will go to the users. Now we will able to access this list with the particular users.


Remove unique permissions from any of the lists

  • To remove unique permission from any of the lists on SharePoint, we need to select list or library and go to the library setting page by selecting from the library setting page.
  • Select the library permission setting option available on the setting page and select the user from the available list of the users.
  • Now, select the users and click Delete Unique Permission from Permission ribbon page, as shown below. 


Check permission for users on SharePoint list or Library.
  • Go to the List or Library and open the same, click List or Library setting from ribbon page on top of the page and select Library setting.



  • Now, select permission for document or list library. Here, we will get an option to check permission from permission ribbon page.
  • Now, it will ask to enter the user name, which you want to check for.


  • Once you enter the user name and click check now button, It will show the permission given to the particular user.


Thanks.