The Folder View is the primary way to explore audit results. It presents your audited directories as an expandable tree structure that mirrors the actual folder hierarchy on disk, with each folder’s permissions displayed in a detail panel.
The left side of the report view shows the folder tree. Each node represents a folder found during the audit. Click the expand arrow to reveal subfolders, just like Windows Explorer.
When you select a folder in the tree, the detail panels on the right update to show that folder’s information.
Tip: After the audit completes, the first root folder is automatically expanded and selected. You can collapse and expand branches freely to navigate the hierarchy.
When a folder is selected, the detail area shows:
\\fileserver\shared\finance\reports)Below the folder details, you see every permission entry (Access Control Entry, or ACE) on that folder. Each row represents one permission assignment and shows:
If “Get group members” was enabled in the profile, group permission entries are expandable — click to see the individual members of that group listed underneath.
When you click on a permission entry, the account details panel shows information about that security principal:
DOMAIN\jsmith)This information helps you understand not just what permissions exist, but who the account holders are — useful for verifying that the right people have the right access.
NTFS permissions can be viewed at two levels of detail:
The standard permission levels that most administrators work with:
| Permission | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Full Control | All operations — read, write, modify, delete, change permissions, take ownership |
| Modify | Read, write, modify, and delete files and subfolders |
| Read & Execute | View files and run programs |
| List Folder Contents | View the contents of a folder (applies to folders only) |
| Read | View file contents and attributes |
| Write | Create files, write data, and modify attributes |
| Special | A custom combination of advanced permissions that doesn’t match any standard level |
The granular NTFS rights that make up the basic permission levels. Each basic permission is actually a combination of these individual rights:
Traverse Folder / Execute File, List Folder / Read Data, Read Attributes, Read Extended Attributes, Create Files / Write Data, Create Folders / Append Data, Write Attributes, Write Extended Attributes, Delete Subfolders and Files, Delete, Read Permissions, Change Permissions, and Take Ownership.
The advanced permissions view shows which specific rights are granted or denied. This is essential when troubleshooting access issues or when you see “Special” in the basic permissions column — “Special” means the permission is a non-standard combination that you need to inspect at the advanced level.
You can toggle between two views for the selected folder:
This lets you quickly scan whether subfolders have different permissions than their parent, which can indicate broken inheritance or explicit overrides.
The permissions list supports sorting and grouping by any column. Click a column header to sort by that column. This is useful for quickly finding specific patterns — for example, sorting by “Permission type” to see all Deny entries together, or grouping by “Account name” to see all permissions for a specific user.
When a filter is applied (see Filter Manager), the folder tree and permissions list use visual highlighting to distinguish matching and non-matching entries:
This lets you see the full context while focusing on the entries that meet your filter criteria. Folders that contain matching entries in their subfolders are also highlighted, so you can navigate directly to the relevant parts of the tree.