Sharepoint 2010: How to give someone access permissions to a list, including all its elements with unique permissions?

Question

There is a Sharepoint site that has a list with lots of different subfolders, many of which have unique permissions, so that they don't inherit them from the parent list.

I need to give someone permissions to the list and all its subfolders, including the ones with unique permissions.

Is there an automatic way to do it?

Answer 1

If you have broken the inheritance on folders and sub folders then there is no automatic way to give the permissions on list, items, folders and sub folders at a time.

You can create a group and give permission to the group on all elements. So that whenever any new member needs to be given permissions on all element, that time you can add him/her in that group.

Also Note that Site collection administrator can access such folders and sub folders even if the inheritance is broken. You can check more about it here.

Update from Comments:

I don't have ready-made PowerShell script. But I found below similar questions as per your requirements:

1. how to iterate through all folders inside subfolders of root level folders.
2. SharePoint PowerShell Grant Permission for each subfolders under a specific folder.