This situation bit me the other day when I was trying to figure out why someone couldn’t open a document in a library that they apparently had permissions to view. I did some research and found that there was a slight (but significant) difference between Read permissions and “View Only” permissions.
Reza Alirezaei summarized it well in his blog post titled Interesting Difference Between “View Only” and “Read” Permissions Levels:
- If a user has “Read” permission level to a document, they can always find the document using search or browser and open it in the browser or their Office client app.
- If a user has “View”Only” permission level to a document, they can only find and open the document in the browser. In that case, Search doesn’t show the document!
Check out his entry for further details. Thanks for sharing that, Reza… maybe I’ll remember I jotted this down next time I run into the problem. 🙂
SharePoint Duffbert 
Nice one, Tom. I didn’t realize the search implications – that could be a huge issue.
Agreed… that was an angle I hadn’t realized when I first ran into the issue. I only carried it as far as the person being able to see the document.
Awesome finding Thomas. I didn’t know that before. I only know if someone having no permission to a document, Search will never result it to him. By the way, I’ve just shared this article to my team. Look forward to reading another awesome article.
-T.s