Remove group owner

Namespace: microsoft.graph

Remove an owner from a Microsoft 365 group or a security group through the owners navigation property. Once owners are assigned to a group, the last owner (a user object) of the group cannot be removed.

This API is available in the following national cloud deployments.

Global service US Government L4 US Government L5 (DOD) China operated by 21Vianet

Permissions

Choose the permission or permissions marked as least privileged for this API. Use a higher privileged permission or permissions only if your app requires it. For details about delegated and application permissions, see Permission types. To learn more about these permissions, see the permissions reference.

Permission type Least privileged permissions Higher privileged permissions
Delegated (work or school account) Group.ReadWrite.All Directory.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account) Not supported. Not supported.
Application Group.ReadWrite.All Directory.ReadWrite.All

In delegated scenarios, the signed-in user must also be assigned a supported Microsoft Entra role or a custom role with the required role permission. The following least privileged roles are supported for this operation:

Microsoft Entra role Limitations Key role permission
Group owners Can modify all types of group owners microsoft.directory/groups/owners/update
User Administrator Can modify user owners only microsoft.directory/groups/owners/update
Directory Writers Can modify user owners only microsoft.directory/groups/owners/update
Groups Administrator Can modify all types of group owners microsoft.directory/groups/owners/update
Exchange Administrator Can modify owners of Microsoft 365 groups only microsoft.directory/groups.unified/owners/update
SharePoint Administrator Can modify owners of Microsoft 365 groups only microsoft.directory/groups.unified/owners/update
Teams Administrator Can modify owners of Microsoft 365 groups only microsoft.directory/groups.unified/owners/update
Yammer Administrator Can modify owners of Microsoft 365 groups only microsoft.directory/groups.unified/owners/update
Intune Administrator Can modify owners of security groups only microsoft.directory/groups.security/owners/update
Knowledge Administrator Can modify owners of security groups only microsoft.directory/groups.security/owners/update
Knowledge Manager Can modify owners of security groups only microsoft.directory/groups.security/owners/update
Windows 365 Administrator Can modify owners of security groups only microsoft.directory/groups.security/owners/update

HTTP request

DELETE /groups/{id}/owners/{id}/$ref

Request headers

Name Description
Authorization Bearer {token}. Required. Learn more about authentication and authorization.

Request body

Don't supply a request body for this method.

Response

If successful, this method returns 204 No Content response code. It doesn't return anything in the response body.

Example

Request

The following example shows a request.

DELETE https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups/{id}/owners/{id}/$ref

In the request, specify the id of the directory object you want to remove after the $ref segment.

Response

The following example shows the response.

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content