Permission & Access Issues

How to Find SharePoint Sites and Permissions for a Specific User

Maira Mehtab Sep 20, 2026 869 views

Question details

The user needs to list all SharePoint site collections and subsites that a specific user has access to, along with their detailed permission levels, without being redirected to external communities.

Product: Microsoft SharePoint
Device & OS: not provided
Scenario: Auditing or managing user access and permissions across multiple SharePoint site collections and subsites.
Observed behavior: The user wants a script or automated flow to efficiently retrieve comprehensive site access and permission data for a targeted user account.

Before you start

Ensure you have SharePoint administrator privileges or sufficient site collection admin rights to query site lists and inspect role assignments across the environment.

Solution 1Recommended

Use Power Automate Flow with SharePoint REST API

Use a Power Automate flow combined with the SharePoint REST API to dynamically query site collections and inspect user role assignments.

While PowerShell scripts are commonly requested for this task, utilizing a Power Automate flow combined with SharePoint REST API calls is a highly effective way to retrieve user permissions across sites.

Retrieve Sites and Subsites

In your Power Automate flow, set up an HTTP request to SharePoint. Retrieve sites and subsites using the endpoint: _api/search/query?querytext='(contentclass:STS_Site) (contentclass:STS_Web)'&trimduplicates=false&rowlimit=5000&selectproperties='Url'.

Inspect Role Assignments

Iterate through the retrieved site URLs and make a GET request to the following endpoint to check role bindings: _api/web/RoleAssignments?$expand=Member/Users,RoleDefinitionBindings.

Check Effective Permissions

To determine the exact access level for the specific user on each site, utilize the SP.Web.getUserEffectivePermissions method within your API calls.

Row Limit Note: The row limit in the search query is set to 5000 to match SharePoint's threshold limits. If your environment exceeds 5000 sites, you may need to implement pagination in your workflow.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get effective permissions for a user via SharePoint Online PowerShell?

Yes, you can use the PnP PowerShell module with the Get-PnPSiteUserEffectiveRights cmdlet to retrieve effective permissions for specific users on sites or lists instead of relying solely on REST API calls.

Why does the REST API query limit at 5000 items?

The rowlimit=5000 parameter matches SharePoint's list view threshold. If your environment has more than 5000 sites, you will need to implement pagination in your REST API call to retrieve all results.

Do I need Site Collection Admin rights to check effective permissions?

Yes, to audit and retrieve role assignments or effective permissions for other users across different sites, you must be a Site Collection Administrator or have full control permissions on the target sites.

Document & File Issues