can you remove the ability for admins to view a space

[Daniel Tombs]

we are trying to hide some of our confidential records from users (easy). but what about the admins?

Can this be done?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

No. 

An admin can't do their job without admin rights, and a full admin can always bypass anything you set up in the software, so Atlassian haven't bothered to try to implement anything like that.

You can not include your admins in the "can use space" and as they browse, they're subject to restrictions placed on pages like any other user.  But they will always have the ability to give themselves "can use" and change the restrictions as part of their job.

You have to trust your admins (and that goes for all software, not just Confluence)

[Daniel Tombs]

understand the trust level and we do. that is not the issue but it is our IT support team that want this in place as they do not want the ability to see the confidential information. 

Is it possible to lock them out of the space completely so they can't see this? forget allowing the ability to see, but is there a way

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Um. I didn't emphasise or include this fully before:

You can not include your admins in the "can use space" and as they browse, they're subject to restrictions placed on pages like any other user, so they won't see it as part of their normal activity.  But they will always have the ability to give themselves "can use" and change the restrictions as part of their job.

[Daniel Tombs]

thats fine. we don't mind them having that ability because when they are needed to do work they can do that. however when all is good and normal they don't see it. what is the best way to implement this

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Nip over to the space you want to protect and go for the admin settings.  Look for the "Permissions"

Change the list of people and groups who can "view" the space, removing whatever it is that allows the admin group to see it.

If you want to do it at a lower level (pages), then just add a view restriction while editing a page (it'll cascade down to child pages)

[Daniel Tombs]

if there is a link somewhere else on the confluence, can the admin follow that and then view because they followed the link?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No.  The link won't even show for them if it's a standard internal confluence link (the text will be there, but no underline or link, as it knows they can't see it)

[Rodney Hughes]

Nic is right - Admins can undo anything you put in place.

But if you want to prevent "inadvertent viewing" by the Admins, use Page View Restrictions then at least they have to individually decide to break the Restriction