How to Delete Myself ...

October 15, 2009 11:59 AM

How to transfer administrative control of a SharePoint subsite? I.e. I created the site, assigned new owners, but now need to remove my own access.

This seems like it should be pretty straight forward. Unlike homemade chili, it is not.


We have a basic SharePoint team site. Admin asked me to create a private subsite where just the back office staff could store sensitive personnel files. Creating was no problem, and I assigned permission such that only those individuals can view. I even "removed" myself from all of the groups.

Or so I thought. I am not getting access denied when I log into the site.

Help! I don't want to coach a coworker, over the phone, how to do each of the trivial steps it took to make this subsite. Is this something my network admin should be able to do? It may help to know that we are a "virtual firm" so I don't have any tech folks on site to help me, nor can I just "hijack" one of the new owner's accounts.

Thank you!

posted by keasby to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

You are probably in the Site Collection Admin group for the site collection. That group has access to all sub-sites in the collection. You can see if this is true by going to the Site Settings page, and then clicking on the link that takes you to the Site Collection settings page. You shold be able to check the admin group from the Advanced Permissions link you'll see here.

Be aware, removing yourself from the Site Collection Admin group will remove your rights to all the other site's in the collection as well, so it is probably not what you want to do.

If this site really, truly needs to have its own access, you should create it as a stand-alone Site Collection instead of a sub-site. You have to create Site Collections from the Central Admin site for your farm...not sure if you'll have access to that on your virtual farm.
posted by Eddie Mars at 1:25 PM on October 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

Definitely the Site Collection Administrator. If you don't want to be able to access all the sites you'll need to assign someone else as the SCA.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:25 PM on October 15, 2009