Hiding and Protecting Items

If business users are logging in to the Content Editor, confusion may ensue. Sitecore provides the “Hide Item” and “Protect Item” features to reduce confusion and prevent accidental errors.

Hiding items prevents items from appearing in the content tree (if “Hidden Items” is unchecked in the View chunk). To hide an item (or an entire branch), click on the item, then click “Hide Item” in the Attributes chunk on the Configure tab. Note that only users in the Sitecore Client Configuring role can access this functionality.


Once an item is hidden, it can be unhidden using the following steps:

• Check “Hidden Items” in the View chunk.
• Click on the hidden item in the content tree.
• Click “Make Item Visible” in the attributes chunk.

Protecting items prevents anyone from modifying a content item (unless they first unprotect it). The intention of protecting items is to prevent the accidental deletion of system functionality. Imagine, for example, the possibility of accidentally deleting the /sitecore/system section of the content tree. This would cause major problems for Sitecore’s functioning and should be avoided at all costs. To reduce the chances of this kind of error, many Sitecore nodes are protected by default. Protected nodes cannot be modified – even by Administrators – without first being unprotected.

When navigating to a protected item, users will be alerted:


Administrators or users belonging to Sitecore Client Configuring may unprotect items by clicking “Unprotect Item” in the Attributes chunk: