Why can't everyone view my space when it's set for "anyone can view, but few can edit?"

Question

I set up a confluence that was needing to be private until it was completed. To keep it private, I set initial folks as admins under Space Permissions so they could edit the pages.

We continued to give people access to view and edit pages, but in order for them to see all pages, parent, child, etc., we had to add them as admins to the page. Is this normal?

Since then I've set the page restrictions to where "anyone can view, but few can edit," but people still cannot view the space unless we put them as an admin.

Does anyone have advice on this?

Laura McWilliams · Answer

I have the same problem. My entire space is set up to allow anyone to view. I have some pages that are set to allow anyone to view, only some to edit.

Anonymous access works, but people who are logged into Confluence but aren't specifically allowed to edit the page, can't view it either.

Florian_8erf7n · Answer

Hi @tyler.sims

I can only talk for the server version. But I think the cloud version should work in a very similar way.

There are two levels of security. Space permission and page restrictions.

Space permissions can be set for users and groups. To set these permissions you need to be space administrator. You can find space permission in the menu in the lower left corner of you browser. Users who need access to your space should have at least the permission to read.

Permissions always add up. Meaning when a specific user is in group A and in group B and you allow group A to edit but not to delete and group B can delete but not edit then the user in this example can do both edit and delete (A+B).

You can also allow anonymous access but this requires to be allowed by you system admin. We don’t do that. I can’t tell how you system is set up.

With proper space permission you have done most of the work and these permission are mandatory. Before you read on, try to understand the concept of space permissions.

Another thing are page restrictions. Page restriction are applied to existing space permission. With page restrictions you can partially revoke space permission for a single page and all of it’s children. Page restrictions can be set with the little pad lock icon on top. When page restrictions say something about “anyone” this is applied to anyone who has space permissions and no other restriction from parent pages. “Anyone” in this context does not mean anyone who has a login to the system. Page restriction also add up but in a negative way. When you have a page tree with multiple levels and you restrict a page on top level then you can only be more restrictive on pages below. You can never make sub pages to be less restricted then their parent page. Page restrictions can be set for users and groups. You need a space permission that allows you to manage page restrictions.

At the beginning it confusing. But I hope this helps a bit.

Mikael Sandberg · Answer

Hi @tyler.sims,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

To allow anyone to view your space, make sure they have view permission under space permissions. Also make sure that you do not have added page restrictions on the top page in the space, view restrictions are inherited down to any child pages. Have a look at Permissions and restrictions, at the end there is a picture that shows how permissions and restrictions works.