SharePoint 2013 - User always need the "Edit Items" Permission to upload to document library?

Question

I'm making a custom permission level where common end users can only view and add, then I simply add new custom permission level and apply it to my document libraries.

Everything goes fine, except that after user upload the document, it showed a dialog box "Access Required. This site hasn't been shared with you".

Then, I realized that the editform.aspx dialog is automatically called after every upload so maybe it needs "Edit Items" permission, and turned out I was right, gave end users Edit Item permission again and the upload works just fine now.

Note: I have an event receiver that handles ItemAdding and ItemAdded, their function is to automatically manage the properties and metadata value of my document library, so I want to disable Edit Item privillege for end users. I dont want them to mess with metadata nor the document itself. How else can I achieve this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Add and Edit are two different base permissions. The behavior you see is perfectly expected, sinnce, as soon as the document is uploaded, the Add operation is done. The Edit dialog that then appears as technically Nothing to do with the Add, but all with Edit.

So you have actually two sources of problems here:

1. Why does the Edit dialog appears?
   It appears under two conditions:
   a. If your document library as required columns, when you upload the document, it's checked-out (since it misses some required columns). If the document is checked-out, the Edit dialog does appear.
   b. Or if you have multiple content types associated to your doc lib.
2. If you edit properties from your ER, it will fail as the ER runs under the identity of the user who triggered the action.
   Only an elevation of privileges could solve that one.