Article: Column Level Security in SharePoint

by James Vastbinder on Nov 25, 2008 |

In this article, Mathew Dressel and Grzegorz Gogolowicz demonstrate how to implement column level security in Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Currently SharePoint does not provide this capability which leaves developers to develop their own solution when needing to secure columns of data for a specific subset of users to a given site.

The object of the article is to:

store data in a secure manner from unauthorized users
render secured data only to authorized users
only allow authorized users to modify secured data

To implement column level security the authors used:

Data Storage List
Custom Field Type
Deployment Solution Package

The authors have made the code available on on the MSDN Code Gallery. Enjoy Column Level Security in SharePoint.

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Community comments

Is this available for download? by Milton Lopez Posted

Re: Is this available for download? by Matthew Dressel Posted

Troubles with secure fields by Ivan Mezhebitskiy Posted

Doesn't work with exporting by Charles Kidder Posted

Secure fields by Marijan Broz Posted

Re: Secure fields by Ruby R Posted

Re: Secure fields by Eitan Bach Posted

Creating a "catalog" list...how? by Sluggo Fernandez Posted

Is this available for download? by Milton Lopez

Great job on using standard SharePoint features to implement secure columns. Since this is a general-purpose solution, is it available for download for those of us who are a bit too busy to implement it ourselves?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Is this available for download? by Matthew Dressel

If you look in the conclusion section you will see a link to download the source and binaries.

Troubles with secure fields by Ivan Mezhebitskiy

This solution works fine, but it seems that only SharePoint administrator user can create secure fields. In my case any other user receives "no access" error when trying to add a field. Though full access is granted for these users.

Doesn't work with exporting by Charles Kidder

The feature is great but I can still export to a spreadsheet or open with access and see the data if I'm a person without rights to see the data on screen.

Any ideas how to prevent seeing the data in access or excel?

Secure fields by Marijan Broz

The feature is great but I need secure field to be choice (menu to choose from).
Any ideas ?

Thanks Marijan

Creating a "catalog" list...how? by Sluggo Fernandez

Greetings:

From within Site Actions --> Create, I don't see where/how to create a Catalog list as mentioned in the article (for the purpose of holding the secure data).

Please, if someone can provide me guidance/advice on that issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks...
Ed in Tampa

Re: Secure fields by Ruby R

Did you make it work? IF so could you/any one pl guide me, even I am trying to secure a choice field.

Re: Secure fields by Eitan Bach

You can tryout "Infowise Smart List Pro" which extend the SharePoint lists and give them extra capabilities like - fields permissions, fields Value Validation, tabbed Interface, view permissions, default values and more.

infowisesolutions.com/product.aspx?id=SmartListPro

Regards,
Eitan Bach