SharePoint Designer permission requirements

SharePoint Designer is a powerful application that enables the rapid creation, editing and deployment of content on the SharePoint platform. As such, certain mandatory permission levels are required.

Detail Information:

As outlined in the article at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/managing-sharepoint-designer-2010-HA101838275.aspx

After enabling SharePoint Designer at the web application level and site collection level, the next steps are to select the users that will be enabled to access, create, and modify SharePoint content through SharePoint Designer.

SharePoint Designer is designed to request and use SharePoint permissions that grant the rights of managing & designing at the SharePoint site level it is not design to use the permission at a smaller granularity level such as list item level permissions..

Reference Documents:

1.      http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262939.aspx

2.      http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721640.aspx

Conclusion:

To be able to use SharePoint Designer and modify SharePoint content, an user needs to be a member of one of the following groups at the site collection level:

1.      Site Collection Administrators group

2.      The Designers group

3.      Owners group

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. Thank you.