Author cannot see the document whose status change from Approved BACK to Pending

Question

We have a Sharepoint 2013 on-premise site. On the site we have a library which have Require Content Approval and Create Major Versions enabled. There is no workflow.

When the author (which do not have approval permission) upload a document, the default approval status is "pending". At this moment, the author can see the document. After the "Approver" approved the document, everyone can see the document.

Later, the Approver found a problem on the document and change the status back to "pending". At this moment, only the "Approver" can see the document. The Author cannot see it. It is the same when the status is "rejected".

Is it default behavour? Can I work around it?

Answer 1

I just checked and I'm also getting the same behavior. This is happening only for the documents that are previously approved.

As a workaround you can go to Versioning settings and for Draft item Security select "Only users who can edit items". That way the author can see the document.