You cannot edit a `honorary`. Only higher-level users have this power.

Joomla 3.9.5
CB 2.4.1
CBSubs 4.1.0.1.0.0

Our Joomla/CB/CBSubs Groups are structured as follows:

Public
- Honorary
- Manager
-- Administrator
-- Club Administration
--- Finance Management
--- Membership Management
- Registered
- Super Users

Paying members are in the Registered group and have access to their own menu after logging in. Non-paying members are in the Honorary group and have their own, restricted menu after logging in - they have no access to the menu seen by paying members.

In Community Builder/Configuration/Permissions everyone in the Manager group and its child groups have Access Administration Interface, Edit and Edit State set to Allowed (inherited). For those only in the Registered group or the Honorary group Access Administration Interface, Edit and Edit State are set to Not Allowed (inherited).

Our Membership Secretary is in the Registered group and also the Membership Management group.

If he tries to edit the profile of an Honorary Member from the ACL he gets the message:

You cannot edit a `honorary`. Only higher-level users have this power.

Only Super Users seem to be able to edit members in the Honorary Group.

What is wrong with our Group structure or are permissions that is causing this problem?

CB prevents users from editing users with higher permissions than them. In the case of new parent usergroups it doesn't know if they should be treated as below them like Registered or above them like Manager. So it opts to treat them as above them.

It's recommended to always add new usergroups as children of Registered so permissions can properly inherit. Example as follows.

Public
- Manager
-- Administrator
-- Club Administration
--- Finance Management
--- Membership Management
- Registered
- - Subscriber
- Super Users

In short your usergroup usage is currently in reverse. You should add Subscriber for paying members and just leave non-paying as Registered. This allows you to grant further access to content using Subscriber. If you need to grant further access based off being a non-subscriber then you'd have the below.

- Registered
- - Honorary
- - Subscriber

Thank you for your quick response and comprehensive explanation. I can now see a way ahead to achieve the result I want.

I (obviously mistakenly) thought that because Honorary and Registered are both immediate children of the Public group and have exactly the same permissions throughout that neither would be higher or lower than the other; this would allow both to be edited by a member of the Manager group. This has turned out not to be the case - a Manager can edit Registered but not Honorary.

So, as you said, CB recognises that Manager is higher than Registered but does not recognise any equivalence between Registered and Honorary and so (by default) treats the latter as higher. This is what has led to my difficulties, though what I do not understand is why the equivalence is not recognised.

Consequently I am going to have to reassign several hundred members to a new child group of Registered (in fact I plan to make Honorary a child of Registered as well to avoid similar problems for whoever comes after me in maintaining this installation). Is there a quick (batch) way of doing this rather than going through them one by one?

This is what has led to my difficulties, though what I do not understand is why the equivalence is not recognised.

It's an issue we need to address in a later release as it's due to an access check implemented before Joomla allowed such deep usergroup management. You didn't do anything wrong and your thinking was right, but it's just a scenario CB doesn't know how to handle very well.

Consequently I am going to have to reassign several hundred members to a new child group of Registered (in fact I plan to make Honorary a child of Registered as well to avoid similar problems for whoever comes after me in maintaining this installation). Is there a quick (batch) way of doing this rather than going through them one by one?

You shouldn't need to reassign them. You should be able to just edit and move Honorary as a child of Registered. Regardless yes you can batch add usergroups within CB > User Management using the groups parameter under Batch Tools.

I encountered the same sort of issue. Is there an update on a plan to address this in a coming release?

My group structure is below - all registered users are classified as a member or a partner, which have different CB fields and are used to display in different lists. I would like Member Admins to have access to edit users in the partner groups.

- Registered
-- Member
--- Member Admin
-- Partner
--- Bronze
--- Silver
--- Gold

Is there an update on a plan to address this in a coming release?

No, I do not have a time frame for when we will be redoing this permission behavior.

My group structure is below - all registered users are classified as a member or a partner, which have different CB fields and are used to display in different lists. I would like Member Admins to have access to edit users in the partner groups.

Member Admins can never have access to Partner as they're completely different usergoup trees. Member and Partner are siblings in your current usage. A CB Moderator can only edit users with usergroups below them. In your case Member Admins can only edit Registered and Member. You'd probably need something like the below.

- Registered
-- Member
--- Partner
---- Bronze
---- Silver
---- Gold
---- Admin

Child usergroups of Moderator and Administrator usergroups also have full permissions over the Registered tree so you could just make them a Moderator, which should also workaround the issue.

Another option is to just have more than 1 admin usergroup. Example as follows.

- Registered
-- Member
--- Member Admin
-- Partner
--- Partner Admin
--- Bronze
--- Silver
--- Gold

Since moderation permissions are based off a view access level within CB > Configuration > Moderation you can add Partner Admin to that view access level then add one, the other, or both usergroups based off what permissions you want them to have.