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Question

Can Collaboration Levels be Different Between a Child and Parent Folder?

  • May 21, 2025
  • 1 reply
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Is it possible to grant someone "editor" rights to a parent folder and then only allow that person to have "viewer" rights in a child folder of that parent folder?  We have a case where we have a parent folder of mulitple projects.  Each individual project is in its own child folder.  Once a project is complete, we want to lock down the corresponding child folder so that no one can edit the contents any longer but we still want the users to have editor rights to the other child folders.  Is this possible?

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    Having different collaboration levels is possible, but not in the way you described.

     

    It is possible to, e.g. grant someone Editor permissions on folder A/B/, but only grant them Viewer permissions on folder A/. To do that, first give them the Editor collaboration on folder A/B/, and then later add the Viewer permission on folder A/.

     

    The reverse is not possible. The Box permissions model uses "waterfall" permissions. So all permissions granted on folder A/, are also available on all descendants of A. So it is not possible to "remove" the editor permissions in a sub-tree.

     

    See https://community.box.com/t5/Collaboration-and-Sharing/Folder-And-Subfolder-Permissions/ta-p/157 .

     

    So what you want to do is not possible.

     

    Instead, you could have a completely separate top-level folder for completed projects, and collaborate that as Viewer. Then, when the project is done, you can move its folder over to that location.

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