Change who can find content and what they can do with it
The new content sharing and access experience is currently rolling out to all customers. If you don’t see it yet, you will soon!
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.
You can’t restrict access to content on the free plan.
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:
Open the Share window.
Find General access.
Select this space in the line “Anyone in this space”
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
Open > Anyone in this space can edit | No restrictions. Consume whatever the space’s access settings are. For example, anyone who has permission at the space level to edit content can edit this content; however if someone lacks space-level permission to edit content, then that person won’t be able to edit this content, even though this content’s access is set to Open > Anyone can edit. |
|---|---|
Open > Anyone in this space can view | All editing is restricted to specific people. Even if people have permission at the space level to edit content, they can’t edit this content unless they’re explicitly listed with Can edit in Specific access (individually or as a member of a group). |
Restricted > Only specific people can view or edit | Even if people have permission at the space level to view and edit content, they can't view or edit this content unless they’re explicitly listed in Specific access (individually or as a member of a group). |
Restricted by a parent > Anyone on the parent can edit | No direct restrictions; restrictions are inherited from a parent item. So consume whatever the parent content’s view access settings are. Anyone who has permission to view the parent content can view this content. Note: Edit permission is not inherited from content to content. Even if people don’t have edit permission on the parent content, they are not prevented from editing this content. |
Restricted by a parent > Anyone on the parent can view | Anyone who can view the parent items can only view this page — unless they’re explicitly listed on this page as having permission to edit (individually or as a member of a group). |
Restricted > Only specific people can view or edit (“Restricted by a parent” scenario) | Even if people have permission to view and edit the parent content, they can’t view or edit this content unless they’re explicitly listed in Specific access (individually or as a member of a group). |
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.
When anyone can edit, no one can have specific access
Individual people and groups only appear in the list with specific access when they have greater access than the General access setting.
For example, if General access is set to Open > Anyone can view, anyone with Can edit will have greater access than the general access and therefore are notable to list in specific access.
However, if General access is already set to Open > Anyone can view and edit, then there’s no greater access possible. Therefore, there is no relevant specific access to note.
If you’re having trouble getting people the right access, see Troubleshoot access problems to content.
Remove someone’s specific access
Open Share on the desired content item.
Find the person or group whose access you want to remove.
Open their dropdown.
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.
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