Accessing private site with full control credentials

Question

The SharePoint Administrator where I work left, and I need to access a page that he created.

my.[server_name].com/sites/[his_name]

How can I access this? He left information on that site that I need to retrieve.

I also have full control and access to elevate any permission I need.

Answer 1

If you are a Farm Administrator or have access to a Farm admin account, you can then add yourself as a Site Collection Admin on any Site Collection for any Web application in that Farm. You mention that several sites are not showing up in CA. Are you sure these are Site Collections and not sub sites? If so, could they possible be in a different Web Application than the one you are checking? There is a drop down in the upper right of the list for changing the Web Application when you are viewing the Site Collections (there is also a paging feature next to it if you have more than 30 SC's. - http://CA_site/_admin/SiteCollections.aspx

Answer 2

I would not go the route of a site collection admin in general. In almost any enviroment i will make a active directory group for farmadmins. The farm admins group will get a "user permission policy" on ALL web applications. The policy will give any member of the group on all zones "Full control". Using this technic will let you access any content on any webapplication with "any" chance to get blocked. Being a sitecollection admin will not allow you to access all content. It will enable you to give you the needed permission. You are "breaking" into the site to get access modifying the structure. I think this is not desired. "User permission policy" is a pretty powerfull tool and should used wisely and only for administrative accounts.

More info:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff608071.aspx#section1

Answer 3

you have to be Site Collection administrator for that particular site. You can set your account as SC Admin in Central Administration

Answer 4

You can change the site collection owners via Central Admin and replace him with you. This will give you full control to access anything within that site collection.