Paul Liebrand's Weblog

This may seem obvious now but I through me for a loop for a few minutes yesterday when a co-worker asked me why he was getting redirected to the SharePoint access denied page when he attempted to add a new item to a list.

I checked the permissions on the list and he had contribute rights; hence the reason why he could see the New drop down button on the list. However, after he filled out the form and click Ok he was immediately re-directed.

After a few minutes I realized that he had the Edit access option of the Item-level Permissions on the list set to None.

Doh! – of course he is getting Access Denied

When adding a new item to a list, the SharePoint object model will,

• Call the SPList.Add() method,
• Update the properties of the SPListItem, then
• Call the SPListItem.Update() method  <—Access is denied

Understand how SharePoint updates the item, you can understand why setting the Edit access option to None would cause an issue.

From an end-users perspective, seeing the New option but getting denied could lead to major confusion. Knowing this as a possible scenario, you can at least be better equipped to help troubleshoot and solve the issue.

Tags: SharePoint, Troubleshooting