With all the different permission options provided by NTFS on Windows Server 2008, it can be difficult to determine how permissions may accumulate to affect a particular user or group for any given file or folder. In order to make this task a little easier, Windows provides a feature known as Effective Permissions which will list the cumulative permissions for a user or group. To access this feature, right click on the required file or folder in Windows Explorer, select Properties and then select the Security tab in the resulting properties dialog. Within the security panel, click on Advanced and select the Effective Permissions tab in the Advanced Security Settings dialog. The next step is to specify the user or group for which the effective permissions are to be calculated. To achieve this, click on the Select button and use the Select User or Group dialog to specify or search for a particular user or group and then click on OK.

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