Fixing Common SharePoint Permission Errors

SharePoint permission errors fall into a small number of patterns. Here is how to recognise and fix each.

"Sorry, this site hasn't been shared with you"

The user is signed in but does not have access to the site. To fix:

• Confirm with the site owner that the user should have access
• Check whether the user is in the relevant Microsoft 365 group or security group
• If access was granted recently, ask the user to sign out and back in. Group membership changes are not always instant and can take some time to propagate, occasionally up to an hour or more

"You don't have permission to access this page"

The user has access to the site but not to the specific page or library. Common causes:

• Inheritance was broken on that page or library and the user was not added to the unique permissions
• The user has Read access at site level but the page requires Edit (e.g. for a Power App embedded on the page)

Check the page's permissions directly. Look for a banner saying "This page has unique permissions."

"Something went wrong" with no further detail

Usually a transient error. To diagnose:

• Note the correlation ID shown in the error message
• Refresh the page
• Try the same action in an incognito or private window to rule out cached credentials
• Try with a different account to confirm whether the issue is account-specific or site-wide

If the error persists, include the correlation ID when you submit a support ticket.

"This site needs you to sign in"

The user's session has expired or their account is not recognised by the tenant. To fix:

• Click the sign-in prompt and complete authentication
• If sign-in fails, check whether the user's account is active in Entra ID
• For guest users, check whether the guest invitation has expired or been revoked

External user cannot access a shared link

External sharing has many possible causes for failure:

• Tenant external sharing setting is too restrictive (check at tenant or site level)
• The link expired (if your tenant sets an expiry on sharing links)
• The link was set to "specific people" and the email does not match
• The external user has not yet completed the guest sign-up flow

User can read but cannot edit

Check whether the user has been granted Read instead of Edit or Contribute. This is the most common cause and is fixed by moving the user to the correct permission level or group.

Document is locked by another user

This is by design when Require check-out is enabled. The user with the file checked out must check it in before others can edit. If the user is unreachable, a site owner can discard the check-out from the library settings.

When to log a ticket

Log a TC support ticket when:

• The fixes above have not resolved the issue
• The error contains a correlation ID and persists across browsers and accounts
• Multiple users are affected
• You suspect a permissions misconfiguration that needs an admin review