In a legacy database that I am working on, there are many permissions given in the public role. I am not able to create new roles/users, therefore that have limited permissions. I have tried using:

DENY ALL TO newuser

to limit the user at the start (I then could edit the few objects they need). But it does not accomplish a specific denial of permissions on database objects to that user.

I can not change the public role without affecting many other areas.

Any ideas?? Is there something I am missing in my statement above?