Group being added to parent site automatically

Question

This has been happening for a while on our SharePoint Online Site. These are the steps to recreate:

1. I have a document library that is no longer inheriting permission from the parent site.
2. I give editing permission to a group in this document library.
3. I then see that this group has also been added at the parent level with editing permissions.
4. I delete group from the parent level.
5. Group also gets deleted from the document library level.
6. Re-add group to the document library with editing access.
7. Verify that the group did not get added at parent level again and it has not.

Any idea as to why this happens and how to stop it.

Answer 1

A group cannot exist just for a document library. If you add a group, then the group will exist at the SharePoint site level, and you can't delete it.

The proper way to handle this scenario is as follows:

• create the group at the site level on the groups page of the site (https://yourTenantName/sites/yourSiteName/_layouts/15/groups.aspx)
• leave all the permission level options blank and save the group
• add members to the group

Now, this group has no effect on the site wide permissions.

Next, edit the document library, stop inheriting permissions, add the group you created above and assign the permissions for that group at the library level.