Skip to main content
Question

How to lock down folders?

  • May 22, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 45 views
C
Forum|alt.badge.img

Hi all,

I am trying to see if I can lock down folders to prevent people from accidental moving or deletion.  I am currently using Box Sync.  I looked through articles that talked about API.  Not a developer.  Any thoughts?

Laveille Voss

    4 replies

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Hi Laveille, 

    Welcome to the Box Community!

    Unfortunately, we don't currently offer the feature you asked about locking down folders to prevent people from accidental moving or deletion.
     
    If this is something you would like to be able to do, I would highly recommend submitting this feature request at pulse.box.com ! Our product managers review these requests and take them into consideration for future product development.
     
    Thanks for your participation in the forum!
     
    Best,
    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Actually, I think that this would help you....https://developer.box.com/reference/resources/folder-lock/. However, it should be noted that this is ONLY a programmatic solution to your problem, we don't offer this functionality to general end users or within the application UI.  When a folder is locked via this mechanism, the end user will get an error message if they tried to move/delete the folder.

    HTH

    John Beutler
    Sr. Solution Engineer
    Box

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Any chance this has been developed since the last response?  This is something that would be very helpful for us.

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Using the information on this page (https://developer.box.com/reference/post-folder-locks/), I was able to lock one of the folders on our installation as a test.

    When I went to delete the lock (https://developer.box.com/reference/delete-folder-locks-id/), I got the message at the bottom. 

    I don't know much about APIs, but I understand the basics of cURL requests. 

    The error message "The access token was not found" is confusing, since only seconds before, I had generated the access token through curl -i -X POST "https://api.box.com/oauth2/token"

    I also tried to remove the folder locks by changing the "locked operations" in my initial lock request from "true" to "false" but that only returned the error message: "type":"error","status":400,"code":"bad_request","help_url":"http://developers.box.com/docs/#errors","message":"Request not of required format","request_id":"04c5e68a7183101192da225f5b10d7509"}

    Anyway, here is the message I got when I tried to delete the folder lock using the steps in https://developer.box.com/reference/delete-folder-locks-id/ (the request itself was simply copied from that page):

     

    % curl -i -X DELETE "https://api.box.com/2.0/folder_locks/<FOLDER LOCK ID>" \ 
         -H "Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN RETREIVED FROM curl -i -X POST "https://api.box.com/oauth2/token">"

    www-authenticate: Bearer realm="Service", error="invalid_request", error_description="The access token was not found."

    curl: (3) URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL
    zsh: command not found: -H

    As of now, the folder is still locked. Would love some guidance.

    Terms of ServiceAccessibility statement