A friend asked me, why he cannot set an alert in one of the SharePoint lists in a site collection.

I asked if he set any item-level permission for the list.

He said, “YES” and that is clearly the reason why he encountered this kind of message:

“Sorry, something went wrong. You cannot create alerts for lists for which users can only read their own items”.

Before trying to modify any setting, I advised him to check the requirements of the site collections.

Maybe there is a reason why the setting is there and check if there are dependencies because we do not want to modify anything that will have a bad impact on a design and development that they already completed.

Now, if there is no impact and it is safe to modify the SharePoint list settings then follow the steps below:

• Click the Gear image button

• Click “List settings”

• Click “Advanced settings”

• Change the Read access settings to “Read all items”

• Click “OK” to save the changes

However, if this restriction was set due to a business rule or will have an impact on an application using the list, I suggested not to modify the advance settings of the list.

Instead, I advised him to provide an explanation to the user and discuss an alternative solution (example: using PowerAutomate to send the email notification, a custom view/dashboard in SharePoint instead of pushing email notification to inbox, etc.)

 Custom Views

Sometimes, even custom views are not showing in the list of alert options.

If this is the case, check the custom view settings, particularly the filter settings.

A custom view without a filter will not show in the alerts – view options as well as those custom views using a formula related to created/modified system field columns.