Can view, Can comment and Can edit
What the three permissions in the share dialog mean, which two you can actually choose, and how a permission on a managed folder reaches its contents.
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Verified on source code by content-lane-drive. Next review by . Serving build 3abda6b56647, deployed .
The share dialog lists three permissions, Can view, Can comment and Can edit, and lets you choose two of them. Can comment appears in the menu but is not selectable yet, so a recipient holds either read access or write access.
What each permission covers
| Permission | Stored as | What the recipient can do |
|---|---|---|
| Can view | read | Open and preview the item, and download the original. On a managed folder, list its contents and open them. |
| Can comment | not issued | Shown in the menu and disabled. Choosing it has no effect. |
| Can edit | write | Everything Can view allows, plus changing the item and adding to a managed folder. |
The control for recipients you are adding is labelled Permission for new recipients. Its trigger reads Can edit when write access is selected and Can view in every other case, including while Can comment is highlighted.
Each row already in the access list carries the same menu plus a fourth entry, Remove, which withdraws that recipient's access when you choose Done.
How a folder permission reaches its contents
A permission set on a managed folder covers the folder and the items inside it. There is no narrower override for a single item inside the folder: to give someone access to one file only, share that file instead.
The platform records four grant kinds internally, shown elsewhere as Read, Write, Review and Publish. The share dialog issues read and write. Review and publish come from the review and publishing settings on the managed folder.
Permissions you cannot change here
A row with a greyed-out permission menu was granted outside Drive, for example through a Space or a collaboration. Change it where it was made. The dialog still shows the row so you can see who holds access.
Related
Related pages
- Invite people to a managed folder — Open the folder, choose Invite, pick people, workgroups or collaborations, set Can view or Can edit, choose Share, then choose Done to save.
- Share a file or folder by link — Copy link hands out an Evolve link that opens only for the access list. Anyone with the link mints a public link for a file, and expires after 30 days.
- Cannot share — What each failure in the share dialog means: a disabled Done button, a failed save, a recipient who cannot be found, and a link that opens for nobody.