PowerShell – PnP – Add-PnPFile fails with “Access denied” resolving the error

Hi All,

Greetings for the day!!! Today new issue and resolution 🙂

Issue – Getting “Access denied” error while executing Add-PnPFile PowerShell CMDLET

Details / Background

• In our one of the SharePoint online project, we are executing PowerShell script
• One of the requirement is to upload few files in “Site Assets” library
• We were implementing this requirement using PowerShell and using “Add-PnPFile” CMDLET
• While executing “Add-PnPFile” CMDLET we are getting “Access denied” error

Issue / Error

PS C:\> Add-PnPFile -Path “C://Users//Documents//PS//ApplyTemplate//images//hideRepublishButton.html” -Folder “SiteAssets”
Add-PnPFile : Access denied.

• Add-PnPFile -Path “C://Users//Documents//PS//ApplyTe …
• ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  • CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (:) [Add-PnPFile], PSInvalidOperationException
  • FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvalidOperation,PnP.PowerShell.Commands.Files.AddFile

Reason / Cause

• I am the Site Collection Administrator on the respective site though the error occurred
• I am SharePoint administrator in Tenant
• I am part of Owners group
• Still to navigate permissions I went to permission page
  • /_layouts/15/user.aspx OR
  • Gear icon >> settings >> Site permissions >> Advanced permissions settings
  • We have detailed article to verify User / Group permissions from UI, please have a look – Microsoft 365 – SharePoint online – How to verify any User / Group permissions on given site from UI

• To check my permissions I clicked on “PERMISSIONS” tab as

• Click on “Check Permissions” ribbon button as shown in above fig
• On click of “Check Permissions” ribbon button we will have “Check Permissions” dialog as

• In above figure if we notice “Check Permissions” dialog – check the last line – “Deny” for :Add and Customize Pages” and this is the issue.

Solution

• To make it work we can update site collection level property – DenyAddAndCustomizePages
• By default value for DenyAddAndCustomizePages property is Enables, we need to disable it

• Updating Site Collection property – using PowerShell we will use “Set-SPOSite” PowerShell CMDLET as

# Updating site collection level property - "DenyAddAndCustomizePages" using "Set-SPOSite" CMDLET
Set-SPOSite -DenyAddAndCustomizePages $false -Identity https://knowledgejunction1.sharepoint.com/sites/sitewithpowershell

#once updated successfully, verifying the respective property
Get-SPOSite -Identity https://knowledgejunction1.sharepoint.com/sites/sitewithpowershell |fl -Property DenyAddAndCustomizePages
DenyAddAndCustomizePages : Disabled

• After successfully updating property, we will able to upload the respective files

PS C:\>  Add-PnPFile -Path "C://Users//Documents//PS//ApplyTemplate//images//hideRepublishButton.html" -Folder "SiteAssets"

Name                     Type Items/Size Last Modified       
----                     ---- ---------- -------------       
hideRepublishButton.html File        283 7/30/2023 8:14:03 AM

REFERENCES

Allow or prevent custom script

Thanks for reading ! HAVE a FANTASTIC LEARNING AHEAD !! LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 🙂