Applies To: SharePoint Designer 2010

I try and keep things safe by using a separate admin account for when I need special access in SharePoint. This really helps with testing as well. By having a separate account as the Site Collection Administrator I’m able to move my regular account around in the SP groups to test permissions.

I highly recommend doing this. It ensures that you can see sites you are working on as an end user will, while still providing you an account that can do all the things you as an administrator need to do. I often will be working on the site using my admin account and when I’m ready to test the permissions with my regular account I simply start a new session in IE (File > New Session). This allows me to have an IE window on each monitor using totally different sessions at the same time.

Generally when I’m editing a site in SharePoint Designer 2010 I’m prompted for credentials since only my admin account has enough access (Designer or above) and I’m logged into my machine with my regular account. This works great. But what happens when my regular account has enough permissions to use SharePoint Designer? Or maybe I’ve got some other account I need to switch to?

By default, SharePoint Designer will only prompt you for credentials to a site if the user you are running as doesn’t have adequate permission. For whatever reason the “hold shift and right-click on the shortcut to choose Run As…” option isn’t available in Windows 7 for SharePoint Designer 2010. You can find some advice about creating batch scripts to get around this, but there’s a really simple solution to the problem.

Unfortunately, Microsoft made it a really hard option to find. Once you know about it it’s incredibly easy and you’ll probably feel stupid for having Googled it and read a blog post about it, but it is not intuitive and they chose a poor location for it. To login as a different user in SharePoint Designer 2010:

1. Open the site (this will use your default credentials)
2. Click the tiny little user icon in the bottom left corner:

3. Press OK in the confirmation dialog:

4. Type in your new credentials in the Windows Security prompt:

5. Everything will close and open again using the newly specified credentials.
6. Don’t tell any of your coworkers that you had to find this solution on the internet. Just show them the button and make them feel stupid for not having known about it.
7. Hop on your flame covered Harley and kick a puppy as you ride off into the sunset.