I think some clarification is needed. “Edit restrictions” does not give/grunt to a user any additional capabilities. It does not depend from the model you select: ‘Allow’ or ‘Prohibit’. User should have posts edit capabilities already.
When you add ‘edit restrictions’ for user, User Role Editor make a less subset of posts available for edit for this user.
Bulk action “Edit Access” from the posts list has a purpose to automate the ‘edit access restrictions’ setup on the user level. You can modify this settings directly opening selected user profile.
So you should input IDs list of users, for which you wish to modify posts edit restrictions. If you do not input users ID list, and suppose that script will update data for all users, it’s a wrong assumption.
Some sites has tens of thousands users – update meta data for every user at such site is not the task which can be fulfilled within the limited time of 1 client-server update request.
For example, users 5,7,9 has role ‘editor’ and can edit all posts. After you set for them ‘Allow’ to edit posts with ID 4, 6, 8 those users will see and can edit just those 3 posts.
If you wish to remove such restriction and allow them to edit all posts back, you may do it opening those users profiles one by one and removing post IDs from ‘edit restrictions’ section.
Other way is to use bulk action ‘Edit Access’ at the posts page, select replace existing data, left posts list empty, input user IDs list (5, 7, 9). As the result post IDs will be removed from those users meta data and edit restrictions stop work for them.
If you wish to set/remove edit restrictions globally it’s more convenient to work with them at the role level – ‘Posts Edit’ button at the User Role Editor page.
