# How does Snowflake "copy\_grants" work here?

**URL:** <https://discourse.getdbt.com/t/how-does-snowflake-copy-grants-work-here/12007>\
**Category:** Help\
**Tags:** jinja, snowflake\
**Created:** [February 12, 2024, 11:26am UTC](https://discourse.getdbt.com/t/how-does-snowflake-copy-grants-work-here/12007 "2024-02-12T11:26:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Svendewaard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dfb087/32.png) [@Svendewaard](https://discourse.getdbt.com/u/Svendewaard)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2024, 11:26am UTC](https://discourse.getdbt.com/t/how-does-snowflake-copy-grants-work-here/12007/1 "2024-02-12T11:26:07Z")

</div>

Hi all,

I am trying to set some specific privileges on my dbt model using grants, but I can only get it to work whenever I set copy\_grants=true. To me, this does not make sense, since from the description of Snowflake’s COPY GRANTS statement it seems that it copies the **existing** privileges into the **new/replaced** table. But this is not happening, since it completely overwrites all privileges previously set. However, when I run the model without copy\_grants=true, all previous privileges are still there and it just appends all new privileges set in my grants config.

In short, this just appends new grants:

```auto
{{
  config(
    grants={"select": ["FFM_DATA_ANALYST_PII", "FFM_DATA_ENGINEER_PII"]}
    )
}}

```

and this replaces all existing privileges:

```auto
{{
  config(
    copy_grants=true,
    grants={"select": ["FFM_DATA_ANALYST_PII", "FFM_DATA_ENGINEER_PII"]}
    )
}}

```

Am I misunderstanding how COPY GRANTS works?  
Thanks!