File, Privately Shared
A Privately Shared File in Salesforce is a Salesforce Files document that is visible only to its owner plus a specific set of people, groups, or records that the owner has explicitly granted access to.
Definition
A Privately Shared File in Salesforce is a Salesforce Files document that is visible only to its owner plus a specific set of people, groups, or records that the owner has explicitly granted access to. It is one of three sharing states a file can hold. The other two are Private, where only the owner (and users with Modify All Data) can see it, and Your Company, where every internal user can find and view it.
A file lands in the Privately Shared state the moment someone shares it with a named person, posts it to a Chatter group, or attaches it to a record. Salesforce does not store this state as a single flag. It computes the state from the file's sharing records, called ContentDocumentLink rows. As long as those rows point at specific users, groups, or records and not at the whole company, the file reads as Privately Shared. This is the working state for nearly every business file, because most files end up attached to a record or shared with a teammate.
How the Privately Shared state actually works
What puts a file into the Privately Shared state
A file becomes Privately Shared when it has at least one sharing record that points to a specific user, group, record, or library, and no sharing record that opens it to the whole company. Salesforce tracks each of these shares as a ContentDocumentLink row, the join between the file and the place it is shared. The platform reads the full set of links for a file and derives the state from them. There is no checkbox labeled Privately Shared that an admin flips. The most common trigger is attaching a file to a record, which happens automatically when you drag a document onto the Files related list of an Account, Case, or Opportunity. Sharing the file with a named colleague through the Share dialog does the same thing. So does posting it to a Chatter group, since group members then gain access. Because the state is derived, it changes on its own as you add or remove shares. Add one named viewer to a Private file and it flips to Privately Shared. Add an org-wide audience and it climbs to Your Company instead.
Who can see a Privately Shared file
Salesforce Help is precise on this point. For a Privately Shared file, only the file owner, users with the Modify All Data or View All Data permission, and the specific people you shared it with can find and view the file. Nobody else stumbles onto it through search or a feed, because it is not posted to any company-wide location. The audience is the union of several groups. It includes the owner, every user named directly on a share, every member of a group you shared it with, and every user who can reach a record the file is attached to. That last path matters most in practice. When a file rides along on a record, access follows the record. A user who gains access to that Opportunity through the role hierarchy or a sharing rule also gains the file, even though no one named that user on the file directly. This is why a file can feel widely available without anyone ever sharing it broadly on purpose.
Owner, Collaborator, and Viewer access tiers
Within the Privately Shared state, each person does not get the same level of access. Salesforce defines three tiers. The owner has full control. They can view, download, share, change other people's access, upload new versions, and delete the file. A Collaborator can view, download, share, attach the file elsewhere, and upload new versions, but cannot change the owner or delete the file. A Viewer is read only. They can preview and download, and nothing more. These tiers are stored on the ContentDocumentLink through the ShareType field. ShareType C means Collaborator, V means Viewer, and I means Inferred, where the person's access is worked out from the related record or library rather than set explicitly. When you share a file with someone and pick Viewer or Collaborator in the dialog, you are writing a V or C ShareType on a new link. Choosing the right tier is the main lever you have for protecting a Privately Shared file, since it decides whether a recipient can merely read the document or also reshare and replace it.
Sharing one file across many records
A single file does not belong to one record. You can attach the same Privately Shared file to many records at once by adding a ContentDocumentLink for each target. Anyone with access to any one of those records can then open the file. This is how a standard onboarding packet ends up attached to dozens of Account records, or how a case-resolution PDF gets linked to every related Case. The file itself is stored once. Only the links multiply. This design saves storage and keeps a single version history, but it also creates a quiet sprawl problem. The more records a file is linked to, the wider its real audience becomes, because each link inherits that record's sharing. A file that started life shared with two people can, after months of being attached to records, be readable by a large slice of the org. The owner rarely notices, because no one ever shared it broadly in a single visible action. The audience grew one record link at a time.
Moving up to Your Company or back to Private
Because the state is computed from links, it shifts automatically as the sharing picture changes. Share a Privately Shared file with an org-wide audience, for example by posting it to a feed everyone can see or to a public group that contains all internal users, and Salesforce recomputes the state as Your Company. At that point every internal user can find and view it. The move is not a separate setting you toggle. It is a side effect of widening the share. The reverse works the same way. Remove every share except the owner, by deleting the non-owner ContentDocumentLink rows, and the file drops back to Private. Nobody but the owner and the Modify All Data crowd can see it again. This reversibility is genuinely useful. A file shared for an active project can be pulled back to Private once the work pauses, without deleting the document or its history. Understanding that the state simply mirrors the current link set is the key to predicting how any sharing action will land.
Auditing access on a Privately Shared file
When a security or compliance review asks who can open a particular file, the answer lives in the ContentDocumentLink rows. Query that object filtered by the file's ContentDocumentId and you get one row per share, listing the LinkedEntityId of each user, group, record, or library the file reaches, along with the ShareType. From that list you can reconstruct the real audience and spot trouble, such as a sensitive contract still linked to a record that half the sales team can see. The query is the only reliable way to audit access, because the file detail screen shows named shares but does not expand every record's inherited audience for you. A practical habit is to review high-sensitivity files on a schedule, since their link sets tend to grow over time as people attach them to new records. The owner who created the file is usually the right person to confirm whether each share still has a business reason, then trim the links that no longer do.
How to privately share a file with someone
Sharing a Private file with one named person is the most direct way to put it into the Privately Shared state. Here is how to do it from the file detail in Lightning Experience.
- Open the file detail
From the Files tab or a record's Files related list, click the file name to open its detail view. You can also click the down arrow next to the file and choose Share.
- Open the Share dialog
On the file detail, click Share. The Share dialog lists everyone who currently has access and gives you a box to add more people, groups, or records.
- Add a person or group
Type a colleague's name, a public group, or a record into the People box. Salesforce searches as you type and shows matching results to pick from.
- Set the access level
For each person you add, choose Viewer for read-only access or Collaborator if they should be able to reshare and upload new versions. Then click Share and Done.
Read only. The recipient can preview and download the file but cannot reshare it or upload a new version. Stored as ShareType V on the link.
Recipient can view, download, reshare, attach the file elsewhere, and upload new versions, but cannot delete the file or change its owner. Stored as ShareType C.
Adding a public group shares the file with every member at once. The file stays Privately Shared unless the group effectively covers the whole company.
Linking the file to a record gives access to anyone who can see that record. Access then follows the record's sharing, an Inferred (ShareType I) link.
- Sharing to a public group that contains all internal users tips the file into the Your Company state, not Privately Shared.
- Collaborator access lets the recipient reshare the file further, so the audience can grow beyond who you originally intended.
- A file attached to a record inherits that record's audience. Widening record access quietly widens who can open the file.
- Removing a person from the Share dialog deletes their ContentDocumentLink. If that was the last non-owner share, the file reverts to Private.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to File, Privately Shared in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Who Can See My File?Salesforce
- File Privacy and SharingSalesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on File, Privately Shared.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on File, Privately Shared.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What defines the Privately Shared state for a Salesforce file?
Q2. Where does Privately Shared sit on the Salesforce Files sharing spectrum?
Q3. What returns a Privately Shared file to the Private state?
Discussion
Loading discussion…