Free License Users Losing Edit Access or Being Removed – Anyone Else Seeing This?

At our company, we’ve recently noticed a trend: team members with free Smartsheet licenses are either:

Being downgraded from Editor to Viewer access automatically, or
In some cases, completely removed from sheets they previously had access to.

This seems to be happening without any manual changes from sheet owners or admins, and only affects users on the free license tier. We've confirmed that these users were previously able to edit sheets they were shared on, but now they can only view—or worse, they’re dropped entirely.

We’ve submitted internal tickets and reached out to our IT contacts, but we’re still trying to understand if this is a Smartsheet-wide policy change or a configuration issue on our end.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this tied to the 2025 update where free users are losing edit rights across enterprise accounts? (Reference).

Would love to hear how others are handling this—especially if you’ve found a workaround or received clarification from Smartsheet support.

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Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/141418/free-license-users-losing-edit-access-or-being-removed-anyone-else-seeing-this

Hi,

I hope you're well and safe!

This sounds like it's tied to your account being transferred to the new user subscription model (USM).

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic day!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Smartsheet Expert Consultant & Partner / CEO @ WORK BOLD

✅ Did I help answer your question/solve the problem? Please support with💡 ⬆️ ❤️, and/or ✅ Answer. This will make it easier for others to find a solution or help answer. I appreciate it, thank you! 🙏

ker9

@Andrée Starå

We are experiencing external shared users unable to access sheets they could access last week. Possibly related to USM but not sure where to find the info needed to understand/fix the problem.

meagans

@ker9 Our plan has not yet been moved to the USM but here is a Help Article surrounding seat types in the new model. It does appear as though External Users may also need to be listed as Members (Paid users) to have edit access. I recommend double checking with your Account Team for more clarity!

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2483479-seat-types-user-subscription-model

ker9

@meagans - thank you for the article! I don't think we converted yet (I don't see it in the Admin center), but I have two separate external users with problems accessing.

ker9

Enterprise plan. We have something like 22k external guests. I suspect that many signed up as free users - are they losing access? (I'm sure some of those are no longer valid but that's a different issue.)

SteCoxy

please add context here everyone..

the issues you're experiencing, are you on the "legacy" licensing model or have you migrated to the new "user subscription model"?

also what plans are you on: Pro/Business/Enterprise/Advanced?

doesn't help others or yourself without giving some background - just causes confusion and panic amongst everyone.

ker9

In my User Type report today (8/6/25), I can see log ins from 8/4 (but not 8/5). External users had access, which is good. Still trying to determine why the others have problems. (Enterprise plan)

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