How to See Who Has Access to a SharePoint Folder

Quick answer

Run SPO Scout's permissions report from any page of the site. It lists every folder (and file) in the site with its own permissions, and who has access to each: the users, the groups and their permission levels, in one result. With Pro, each SharePoint group expands to the people inside it, and a sharing link scan lists the links in the library.

SharePoint's Manage access panel answers the same question for one folder at a time, and shows group names rather than the people in them.

Five ways into a folder

Access to a folder can come by five routes, and removing someone from one does nothing to the other four:

• Inherited from the library or a parent folder: most folders.
• A direct grant on the folder itself.
• A SharePoint group the person belongs to.
• A Microsoft 365 or security group, one layer further out.
• A sharing link, sometimes one that works without signing in.

That's why someone can lose their site membership and still open a folder through a link created eighteen months ago, and why a good answer has to cover all five.

See who has access with SPO Scout

1. Open any page of the site in SharePoint and open the SPO Scout side panel.
2. Run Permissions Report, or Permissions Report (Expanded) to list the members of each SharePoint group (Pro).
3. Open Unique Permissions: every folder and file that manages its own access, with the principals and permission levels on each.

With Pro, Export PDF opens the full report in its own tab, where a filter finds a folder, or a person, at once.

People, not just group names (Pro). Manage access will tell you Marketing Members: Edit, which is true and not much use during a review, because the question was who can open the folder. The expanded report lists the members under each SharePoint group, so the answer is on the page.

Sharing links (Pro). Links are separate grants, so they need a separate check. The sharing link scan checks one library (its first 2,000 items, stopping at 500 items with links), lists each item's links by type, and removes them all at once after you confirm. It doesn't show who created or received a link, and links aren't part of any export.

A record (Pro). Export to PDF or CSV. An access review that can't show what was reviewed, and when, is hard to evidence later.

It runs in your existing SharePoint session, with no app registration and no admin consent, and it sees only what your own account can. Reporting across the whole site is free, up to 3 analyses a day.

Without SPO Scout: what it takes

• Manage access, one folder at a time. It shows the people, groups and links on the folder you select, with a count on each tab: six people and four groups isn't ten people, it's four more lookups.
• Inheritance and permission levels on another page, again per folder.
• Group members elsewhere. Each SharePoint group's members are on its own page, and Microsoft 365 or security groups nested inside are in the admin center, sometimes several levels deep.
• Links on each folder's Links tab, and the classic permissions page doesn't name who holds them.
• "Show these items" lists a library's folders with their own permissions, but each one is still its own panel. A library with four hundred folders is four hundred panels.

Why someone still has access

When a person should not be able to open a folder but can, it's usually one of these:

• Site membership, and the folder still inherits: the site is the problem, not the folder.
• Microsoft 365 group membership: joining a Team grants access to its site.
• A direct grant on the folder, usually made to fix something urgent.
• An old sharing link, never revoked.
• A parent folder that broke inheritance and was granted extra access, which the folder inherits.

Work through them with the report open: does the folder inherit; who is named on it; who is inside each group (Pro); which links exist (Pro); what the parent folder grants; and, outside SharePoint, the Microsoft 365 group behind any connected Team. Then remove the access at the route it actually came from.

What SPO Scout covers

• The whole site, down to every folder and file with unique permissions, in its document libraries and custom lists. Other list types, such as Site Pages, picture libraries, calendars and task lists, aren't included. It doesn't read the site's own permission list or cover subsites.
• SharePoint groups expand one level (Pro). A Microsoft 365 or security group inside one, which is how Teams-connected sites are built, shows as a single entry; check its members in Teams or the admin center.
• In the permission report, a shared item shows as an item with unique permissions and a SharingLinks group; the sharing link scan shows the links themselves.

Frequently asked questions

How do I see who has access to a SharePoint folder? Run SPO Scout's permissions report from any page of the site: every folder with its own permissions is listed with the users, groups and permission levels on it, and with Pro, the members of each group. For one folder, SharePoint's Manage access panel shows its people, groups and links.

Does Manage access show everyone who can open a folder? It shows the principals and links on that folder, but not the members of its groups, so it's complete at the group level, not the person level.

If I remove someone from a group, do they lose folder access? They lose what that group granted, everywhere the group is used. They keep anything granted to them directly, anything from another group, and any sharing link they hold.

Why does a folder have different permissions from its library? Its inheritance was broken, on purpose or automatically when someone shared it. How to find unique permissions in SharePoint covers where those exceptions come from.

What is the fastest way to check many folders at once? A report that walks the site. SPO Scout's permissions report lists every folder and file with unique permissions, and who has access to each, in one pass.