Permissions Inheritance #

Sharing a folder cascades permissions down through that folder’s contents. This allows you to organize your documents in folders, ie, by department, and then share a folder with the users from that department rather than having to share all the documents individually.

The permission you grant is what is cascaded. If you give a user ‘Viewer’ permission to a folder, then that user will receive ‘Viewer’ permission on all of the folder’s contents, unless the user has an explicit permission already.

Explicit versus Inherited Permissions #

Inherited permissions do not override an explicit permission that has been granted on a document or folder inside the folder being shared. A couple scenarios help to describe this.

Scenario One #

You share a document with a user, for example, giving them ‘Viewer’ access. Later, you share the folder that contains that document with the same user, giving them ‘Editor’ access to the folder. The user will recieve ‘Editor’ access to the folder and its contents, but not on the document. They will still have ‘Viewer’ permission on the document because it was explicitly granted.

Scenario Two #

You share a folder with a user, for example, giving them ‘Viewer’ access. Later, you update the user’s permission on a document inside that folder, giving them ‘Editor’ access. The user now has an explicit ‘Editor’ permission on the document, but still has ‘Viewer’ permission on the other contents in the folder.