How to Create Default Groups in SharePoint Online

How to Create Default Groups in SharePoint Online (2025)

Last Updated on July 25, 2024

Can’t find the default groups?

In this guide, I will walk you through the steps of creating the default groups in SharePoint Online.

Let’s get started.

What are SharePoint groups?

Basically, these groups are collections of users that allow you to manage SharePoint permissions efficiently on a site.

That’s because each group (including custom groups) has its own default permission levels.

The default groups are the following:

  • Owners: Have full control over the site and its contents.
  • Members: Can add, edit, and delete content but cannot change site settings.
  • Visitors: Can view content but cannot make changes.

These groups help control who can access certain content and what actions they can perform on SharePoint sites.

You can actually use these groups to assign permission to multiple users at once, which is easier to manage.

⚠️ Note: The problem though is that when you create a site programmatically, these default groups aren’t created.

👉 Related: How to Create a New Group in SharePoint: The Complete Guide

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    How to Create the Default Groups

    Fortunately, it’s not really that hard to create the default SharePoint groups.

    Step 1: Go to the permsetup page

    If you want to create them through the user interface, you simply need to modify the site URL and add:

    /_layouts/15/permsetup.aspx.

    For example, if the SharePoint site was https://mrsharepoint.sharepoint.com/sites/HumanResources, then it would be:

    https://mrsharepoint.sharepoint.com/sites/HumanResources/_layouts/15/permsetup.aspx

    Nice! 🙂

    Step 2: Set up the groups

    You will be brought to a page where you can set up groups for the site collection.

    It looks like this:

    use an existing group

    If you don’t have any of the groups here, select the “create a new group” option and press the OK button.

    Or, if there’s only one missing default group, you can also create that easily here.

    That’s it! 🙂

    👉 Related: How to Restore the Default SharePoint Groups for a SharePoint Site

    Managing SharePoint Groups

    SharePoint groups make permission management and access control easier.

    But don’t forget to regularly review and update SharePoint group memberships to ensure that site permissions are up to date.

    Anyway, got any questions about creating the default groups in SharePoint Online? Let me know.

    For any business-related queries or concerns, contact me through the contact form. I always reply. 🙂

    About Ryan Clark

    As the Modern Workplace Architect at Mr. SharePoint, I help companies of all sizes better leverage Modern Workplace and Digital Process Automation investments. I am also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for SharePoint and Microsoft 365.

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