Read Only Permissions in Confluence
Asked by Andrew Maruzzella:

Hello - after reading through documentation, I am having some trouble understanding security and permissions since these are controlled across multiple areas of the administration/configuration of the tool.

I simply want to have users who are "read only", meaning they can view all the pages in the space and that's it. It seems that the only way to achieve this is to manually modify every page's individual restrictions. Is there an easier way? The space already has several hundred pages and ultimately will have thousands of pages.

I have already placed the read only users into a unique group and I defined Global Permissions and Space Permissions for that group so that they only have the "view all" permission and nothing else, but they can still edit every page unless the restrictions on the individual page itself are modified.

Thank you for your help.


Answers:
author: Sam Hall
body: Hi Andrew,

I found the same issue as you, but I think fixed it by also updating the permissions for Anonymous Access (even though I don't have it enabled on my instance).

To get it to work on the space in question, I have:

* Made sure**confluence-users** has only the 'View' permission.
* Added a new **confluence-editors** group, for a few users, with full permissions.
* Made sure **Anonymous** has only the 'View' permission.

Below is a screenshot of my space permissions. When I test this with a user who is **only** in the confluence-users group, they have "read-only" access to all pages in the space.

Hope that fixes it for you too.

Sam

example-read-only-space-permissions.jpg

[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Read-Only-Permissions-in-Confluence/qaq-p/378686?attachment-id=3063){#link_11862331a747d3}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/64026/1/example-read-only-space-permissions.jpg){#display_11862331a747d3_0}

comments: author: Andrew Maruzzella
body: Hi Sam - I just responded to Attilio and did exactly as you suggested and it worked! Thanks!


author: Sam Hall
body: No problem Andrew. Glad to help. If you feel my answer was helpful, I'd be grateful if you'd mark it as accepted or upvote it as useful : )


author: Andrew Maruzzella
body: Hi Attilia,

Thanks for your help. I verified that the user's groups are set as you said and they are already that way. I did make one change to make the "anonymous access" to be "all view" only, and that seems to have helped. Now my test user (which is not an anonymous user, it's a regular user which must log in) does not have the edit abiltiy.

However my test user can still export pages, even though the Space Export permission is not active. Is there a way to adjust this so that only administrators can export?

Thanks again,

Andrew

comments: author: Daniel Marczisovszky [META-INF]
body: Dear Andrew,

Are you talking about built-in the PDF and Word export functionality that can be accessed from the drop down menu on the page? If anwser is yes, then these functions can not be disabled. Anyone who can view a page can also export it. Space export permission prohibits only exporting the whole space in a single step.

Bye,  
Daniel


author: Attila Gaspar _META-INF_
body: Hi Andrew,

I checked the settings you described above, but I really do not need to set up restrictions to avoid page editing. "All View" permissions does not permit to edit the pages for users (see the picture below, there is no Create button, and Edit button).

I recommend you to check all of the groups of your test users. I think he or she has "Page Add" permission via a group membership.

Best regards, Attila

view_permission.png

[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Read-Only-Permissions-in-Confluence/qaq-p/378686?attachment-id=12652){#link_1186234d3cd925}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/64025/1/image2016-11-11%2017%3A41%3A42.png){#display_1186234d3cd925_0}  
[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Read-Only-Permissions-in-Confluence/qaq-p/378686?attachment-id=12653){#link_1186234d3cd925_0}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/64025/2/view_permission.png){#display_1186234d3cd925_2}  
[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Read-Only-Permissions-in-Confluence/qaq-p/378686?attachment-id=12654){#link_1186234d3cd925_1}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/64025/3/image2016-11-11%2017%3A41%3A57.png){#display_1186234d3cd925_4}


Tags: confluence-cloud