There is a difference between “Read” and “View Only” Permission Levels

 This situation bit me the other day when I was trying to figure out why someone couldn’t open a document in a library that they apparently had permissions to view.  I did some research and found that there was a slight (but significant) difference between Read permissions and “View Only” permissions.

Reza Alirezaei summarized it well in his blog post titled Interesting Difference Between “View Only” and “Read” Permissions Levels:

  • If a user has “Read” permission level to a document, they can always find the document using search or browser and open it in the browser or their Office client app.
  • If a user has “View”Only” permission level to a document, they can only find and open the document in the browser. In that case, Search doesn’t show the document!

Check out his entry for further details.  Thanks for sharing that, Reza… maybe I’ll remember I jotted this down next time I run into the problem.