I'm stumped.

I have a MAIN table with only one record (all globals) from that table I have a relationship to an ITEMS table and from items to SUBITEMS.

In a layout based on the MAIN table i built a portal that shows records from SUBITEMS. This portal only works, showing records, if I'm signed in with Full Access rights. I created a different account that is identical to the Full Access rights account and still won't work.

Any ideas?

You mention access rights in your post title, but give us no info about what priv sets/rights you've set up in the file.

If you're displaying all Subitems records in a portal on Main, why not have a cartesian join between Main and Subitems; that is, why go thru Items.

Because it's a filtered portal, I only need to see certain items and thus only certain subitems.

I know i mentioned the access right and that is because I'm looking at that layout and when I'm logged in with full access i see the records, then i run a relogin script and i see the records in the portal disappearing. I'll try to post a demo file shortly.

Records that users are not allowed to view are automatically filtered out of the related set (as they would be left out when performing a find in the related table itself).