Enhance collaboration by sharing workspaces and the items within it. Better understand how to give your collaborators access to the items they need.
USM Content
When you share a workspace with a user, the user can access all the items in that workspace.
If your sharing needs change, you can remove people from the workspace or change their sharing permission levels.
The people you share a workspace with can’t access any of your Smartsheet items outside the workspace unless you share them explicitly. To share workspace items individually, see Overview: Share sheets and reports for details.
Basics of workspace sharing
To open a workspace
- Select Home > All workspaces...
- Select the name of the workspace you want to share.
To review who already has access to your workspace:
- Select Share > Workspace and review the People with access list.
To review who already has access to an item:
- Select Share > Sheet and review the People with access list.
Share a workspace
- In the upper-right corner of the workspace, select Share > Workspace.

- In the Invite people and groups field, type the email addresses of the users or groups with whom you’ll share the workspace.
- Select a permission level for each collaborator.
- Optional: Select Customize message to personalize the message for your collaborators.
- Select Share.
The people and groups you invited are shared to the workspace and receive the notification.
If you have many email recipients, a dialog confirms the invitation. If you still want to send the notification, select Notify anyway. You can remove people from the mailing list by selecting Back and clearing the Notify people checkbox.
Owners or Admins can share, unshare, and modify any collaborator’s sharing permissions.
Share an item in a workspace
- In the workspace, open the item you want to share
- In the upper-right corner of the item, select Share.
- In the Invite people and groups field, type the email addresses of the users or groups with whom you’ll share the workspace.
- Select a permission level for each collaborator.
- Optional: Select Customize message to personalize the message for your collaborators.
- Select Share. You can also share the workspace by selecting Share to workspace.
Look at the icon next to the collaborator's permission level to differentiate when they have access only to the item or to the workspace.
- When they have access to the workspace, you see this icon.
- When they have access only to the item, you see this icon for sheets, this icon for reports, and this icon for dashboards.
Stop sharing or change permission levels at the workspace level
- In the upper-right area of the workspace, select Share > Workspace.
- Hover over the collaborator you’d like to remove or change.
- You can remove a collaborator by clicking the X next to their permission level or change their permission level by selecting a different permission from the dropdown menu.
If you stop sharing with a collaborator when they view a sheet in the workspace, the collaborator will receive an error message at the next save or refresh.
Workspace sharing permissions
The permission level you grant a user (or a group) determines their access to a workspace and its items, depending on the permission level you grant them.
As a best practice, you should share a workspace using the lowest level permissions (Viewer, Commenter).
If you change a workspace Admin’s permission to Editor or Viewer, you become the new owner of the Smartsheet items they own in that workspace.
This table shows how a user’s access to a workspace or an item within it could be affected.
When you | The user | For example |
---|---|---|
Give a user higher workspace sharing permissions than they have on an individual item | Receives the higher permission level on the item located in that workspace | You gave someone Editor-level access to a sheet, and they have Admin permissions in the workspace where the sheet is located. That person will have Admin-level permissions on the sheet. |
Give a user lower workspace sharing permissions than they have on an individual item | Sees no changes to their access to the item in the workspace | A user is an Editor on a sheet. Then, you gave them Viewer access to the workspace where the sheet is located. The permission level they have in that sheet won’t change: they will still be an Editor on that specific sheet. |
You can’t give another collaborator a higher access level than yourself. For example, you can’t promote another Editor to Admin if you're an Editor.
Task | Viewer | Commenter | Editor | Admin | Owner |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
View all workspace item contents | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Add comments and attachments to rows | x | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit content in sheets and reports | x | x | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Share the workspace or workspace items | x | x | x (unless specified) | ✓ | ✓ |
Rename or add workspace items | x | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
Move workspace items in or out | x | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
Delete workspace items | x | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
Delete the workspace | x | x | x | x | ✓ |
See the Sharing permission levels article for permission levels and how they impact Smartsheet items.
You can make workspace sharing easier to manage with Smartsheet Contact Groups. Note that if you share a workspace with a Smartsheet Contact group, all group members inherit the selected permission level.