2 ways to control page editing on a SharePoint site

By default, any regular member of the site can add/edit/delete pages on a SharePoint site in SharePoint Online. This is good news if you are building some sort of Wiki/Knowledge Base and want your users to edit/add content easily. However, if you have a Communication Site of some sort that is meant to be managed by select few people, you probably do not want any shmuck (sorry, I meant to say your colleagues) in your team to edit the layout of the pages or worse, delete them. So in this post, I would like to give you a few options on dealing with page editing on a SharePoint site.

The problem

By default, any Site Members (those with Edit permission level) can add/edit/delete anything on a site. This includes document libraries, lists, and pages. Page, though responsible for the layout of the Site, is considered just another piece of content. So if you can edit an Excel doc, why not a Page?

So what that means is that little Johny from your team can edit files in a library and also pages in the Site Pages library. Any member can just hit the Edit page button in the upper-right-hand corner and edit the page as necessary.

The solution

There are two ways to control page editing on a SharePoint site:

Option 1: Via permissions

The first option to control page editing on a SharePoint site is to restrict access to the Site Pages Library (where the pages reside). The idea is that you make Site Members visitors (read-only) on just 1 page or the whole Site Pages Library. I documented this process in this post, so feel free to check it out.

This option is great when you are the only one managing the pages, and you really do not want anyone else to help/assist with any changes.

Option 2: Via Power Automate

The other option to achieve the same objective would be by building the Power Automate Workflow. I documented the setup here.

The idea behind this option is that you do not restrict anyone from making any changes to the pages. Still, before the changes are published and visible to everyone, they go through approval. This option is great when you want others to contribute as well, but check their edits before changes are published to the masses.

It is worth noting that this option does not prevent users from deleting pages. The workflow only works when edits are made.