Can SharePoint Viewers Create News Posts Without Edit Access?
Question details
The user is looking to determine if there is a way for site visitors or viewers to create and publish SharePoint news posts without being granted full site editing permissions.
- Product
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Device & OS
- not provided
- Scenario
- Managing site access and enabling content publishing for specific users without compromising overall site structure.
- Observed behavior
- Creating a news post automatically generates a new site page, which inherently requires the user to have edit or publishing permissions for the site.
Ensure you are logged into SharePoint with Site Owner or Full Control permissions so that you can modify user access levels and configure advanced page permissions.
Assign Minimum Editorial Permissions and Manage Access on Existing Pages
Since a news post is a site page, users must have editorial permissions to create one. You can grant these permissions and later restrict access on specific pages if needed.
SharePoint does not provide an independent or separate permission level exclusively for publishing news. Because every new news post essentially creates a new page in the Site Pages library, the user must have edit access to that library.
To work around this limitation, you can grant the minimum editorial rights required to create the news page, and then use unique permissions to prevent editing on other critical pages.
Navigate to Site Permissions and grant the specific users or groups the 'Contribute' or 'Edit' permission level so they can create pages.
Once the user has created the news post, navigate to the Site Pages library and open the newly created news page.
Click the gear icon (Settings) in the top right corner and select 'Manage access' from the menu.
Scroll to the bottom of the Manage access panel, click 'Advanced settings', and choose 'Stop Inheriting Permissions'. You can now remove or modify user access specifically for this page.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why does SharePoint require edit access to create a news post?
In SharePoint's architecture, a news post is technically treated as a standard site page stored in the Site Pages library. Because of this, the system requires the user to have the necessary permissions to create and edit pages.
Can I create a custom permission level just for publishing news?
No. While you can create custom permission levels in SharePoint, there is no granular permission specifically scoped to 'create news' that bypasses the requirement for broader page creation rights.
How can I prevent a user from editing the home page after granting them edit access?
You can break permission inheritance on the home page. Go to the Site Pages library, select your home page, click 'Manage access', go to 'Advanced settings', and remove the user's edit permissions exclusively for that page.
