Ability to Navigate site with permissions only to a library

Question

Working with SharePoint Online, we have a team site setup and a set of document libraries.

The permissions were set at the site level and inherited to all libraries. For one of the sub folders (Folder1) we broke inheritance and gave a new group (Group1) read access only.

Group1 was not included at the site level, it was however granted limited access at the site level automatically by SharePoint once the permissions for Folder1 were assigned.

The users in Group1 can access Folder1 if the direct url is used, but cannot navigate using the site main page and navigation bar.

My understanding of limited access is that they users will be able to navigate the site and reach the resource they have higher than limited access permissions for.

Is it possible grant additional read only permissions to the main site resources to allow navigation but only see resources in which they have permissions higher than limited access?

Answer 1

You can deactivated the “Limited-access user permission lockdown mode” feature via site settings->site collection features. It will allow users who don’t have permission to access entire site to navigate the pages and access to the relevant location they have permission.

Answer 2

Deactivating “Limited-access user permission lockdown mode” did not provide the necessary permissions in order for (Group1) users to view the Top Nav Bar, Quick Launch or allow traversing of the site.

We ended up updating the site and providing (Group1) read only access at the site level. Then broke inheritance on libraries and restricted permissions where necessary.

This is not ideal but the stakeholders would not modify the site and library design.