Change who can find content and what they can do with it

Even in a shared space, you may have content that you're not ready to share with everyone yet. Or perhaps you have some confidential content that's only meant for a few eyes. Whatever the reason, Confluence lets you set view and edit restrictions at the content level so you can keep your content as open or as closed as you need.

Who has access to your content?

The first step to changing who can access your content is understanding who currently has access to it.

Confluence’s core tenet is about getting the right knowledge to the right people in your organization. To support this, Confluence’s permissions are open by default, which means that the content wants to be available to everyone unless otherwise noted.

The fundamental piece of this open-by-default model is represented by General access. This refers to the general audience for the content item — everyone who has at least view access to the space a content item lives in, or, if a parent item is restricted, everyone who has at least view access to the parent item.

Who is “Anyone in this space”?

To check who currently has access to the space:

1. Open the Share window.

2. Find General access.

3. Select this space in the line “Anyone in this space”

   1. If the content item is restricted by a parent, then you can check who has access to the parent item by selecting this parent in the line “Anyone on this parent”

To learn more about space access, see Assign space permissions.

Change general access

You can set general access to 3 states of permissions:

• Open > Anyone can edit

• Open > Anyone can view

• Restricted > Only specific people can view or edit

What each general access state means

Learn why someone can't edit, even if the General access setting suggests that they can.

How inherited restrictions work

If someone can’t view a parent content item, they won’t be able to view any child content items under it. In this sense, a view restriction has been added to the parent item that inherits down to all content items nested under it, without exception.

Editing doesn’t work this way. Even if someone is restricted from editing a parent item, they won’t automatically be restricted from editing the child content.

However, if someone is restricted from editing at the space level, they will be restricted from editing any and all content in that space.

How restricted are restrictions?

If your content has view restrictions, it won't display for anyone who doesn't have permission to view it, neither in the content tree nor any macros. 

Unless someone else has specifically been given a link to your content, they won't know it exists.

Exceptions:

• If someone has shared a link to a restricted content item or provided a link to it on another content item that can be viewed, the link will have the title of the content item as part of the URL. However, they won't be able to tell anything else about the content, including who created it, who has permission, or when it was updated. 

• Organization admins on the Premium and Enterprise plans can view and change access to any content in Confluence with admin key.

Give someone specific access

To list a person or group with specific access, you’ll need to add a restriction to the general access of the content item, then add individuals or groups. (Teams are not supported in the unified sharing experience yet.)

For example, in an “Open” state, you can change the permission for anyone in the space from “Can edit” to “Can view”. This will restrict who can edit the content item. In this state, you can then use the search bar to add people or groups to Specific access with “Can edit” permission.

This is useful for content that should be distributed widely but only edited by a small team.

Or you can set General access to “Restricted”. In this state, you can add people or groups to Specific access freely with “Can edit” or “Can view” permissions.

If you’re having trouble getting people the right access, see Troubleshoot access problems to content.

Manage access requests

Another way of giving people specific access is to take action on access requests to your content items. Individual users can ask to view content items they can’t view or edit content items they can’t edit.

These requests will land in the Requests area with Share. There, owners of the content item, as well as any user who was permission to change access to the content item, can choose to Approve or Deny the request.

If you select Approve, the user will be added to the specific access list with the indicated permission and they’ll get a notification that their request was approved.

If you select Deny, the user’s request will be deleted from Requests for everyone. The requesting user will not be notified.

Remove someone’s specific access

1. Open Share on the desired content item.

2. Find the person or group whose access you want to remove.

3. Open their dropdown.

4. Select Remove.

Make content private to only you

If the content is in an Open > Can edit state, set General access to “Restricted” and select Save. This will remove access for everyone but you.

If the content is already in a “Restricted state”, you can quickly clear the board and make the content private by selecting Remove all.

If the content is in an Open > Can view state with multiple editors, set General access to Restricted and then select Remove all to remove everyone but yourself.

Basically, if no one but you is listed in Specific access while General access is set to “Restricted”, then the content is private to you. If General access is set to Open or if other people are listed in Specific access, then the content is not private to you.