Disable teams mailbox creation

Question

Disable teams mailbox creation

ES 1

Hello everyone. We are playing with teams as an option for virtual learning and collaboration.

Our current issue is that teams requires us to allow Microsoft 365 group creation. We do not want users to be able to create their own groups, and when you create a team it automatically creates a shared mailbox/M365 group. Currently we have under Azure Active Directory > Groups > Microsoft 365 Groups > Users can create Microsoft 365 groups in Azure portals, API or PowerShell set to No but it must be set to yes for teams allow creation.

Is it possible to allow teams creation by individual users without creating a Microsoft 365 group?

Thank you for any help that can be given.

2 answers

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Answer 1

JimmyYang-MSFT 58,646 Microsoft External Staff

Hi @ES

Is it possible to allow teams creation by individual users without creating a Microsoft 365 group?

This is not feasible. When you create a team, here's what gets created:

A new Microsoft 365 group
A SharePoint Online site and document library to store team files
An Exchange Online shared mailbox and calendar
A OneNote notebook
Ties into other Microsoft 365 and Office 365 apps such as Planner and Power B

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ES 1 Reputation point

2022-01-18T15:14:09.03+00:00

Hi JimmyYang, I appreciate the details. I did not actually know how much Teams was integrated with other Office 365 apps.

I just wanted to give some more details of why group creation was turned off.

We (being our IT dept) use distribution lists instead of 365 groups. What is happening is staff are creating duplicate 365 Groups (when they really are meaning to create Contact Groups). Other staff from the original distribution list are not getting emails, because a user is sending it two the duplicate 365 group, and whoever created the 365 Group forgot users. When people need to be added, we have to figure out which 365 Group they are missing from (as a few users created the same group 2 or 3 times). Also, they do not set the groups to private/not show in the address book, so when users create random groups with much more random names, they populate the address book, throwing some people off. We want to completely can user-managed 365 groups and use our distribution lists, as we always keep them up to date, however, we can live with Teams creating groups.

Simply put, is it possible to restrict the creation of 365 Groups in Outlook but still allow the creation of teams in MS Teams?

Thank you again for the help!
JimmyYang-MSFT 58,646 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2022-02-02T10:38:16.25+00:00

Hi @ES

At present it cannot be completed.
Dimitris Xanthopoulos 0 Reputation points

2023-01-12T15:47:59.86+00:00

[https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/office-365-groups

When creating a Microsoft 365 group in Outlook or SharePoint, the group mailbox is visible in Outlook. When creating a team in Teams, the group mailbox is hidden by default. You can use the Set-UnifiedGroup cmdlet with the HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled parameter to make a mailbox visible.
Angelica Lastra 0 Reputation points

2023-03-11T01:53:38.49+00:00

Is it possible to hide the mailbox components (mailbox and calendar) ? how?

Answer 2

Vasil Michev 119.7K MVP Volunteer Moderator

No, each Team has an underlying Office 365 Group, there is no way to separate them or prevent the creation of the Group. By default such groups are "hidden" in the GAL and from Exchange clients though, so they shouldn't be creating too much clutter.

ES 1 Reputation point

2022-01-18T15:12:57.53+00:00

Hi Michev, I appreciate the information!

I just wanted to give some more details of why group creation was turned off.

We (being our IT dept) use distribution lists instead of 365 groups. What is happening is staff are creating duplicate 365 Groups (when they really are meaning to create Contact Groups). Other staff from the original distribution list are not getting emails, because a user is sending it two the duplicate 365 group, and whoever created the 365 Group forgot users. When people need to be added, we have to figure out which 365 Group they are missing from (as a few users created the same group 2 or 3 times). Also, they do not set the groups to private/not show in the address book, so when users create random groups with much more random names, they populate the address book, throwing some people off. We want to completely can user-managed 365 groups and use our distribution lists, as we always keep them up to date, however, we can live with Teams creating groups.

Simply put, is it possible to restrict the creation of 365 Groups in Outlook but still allow the creation of teams in MS Teams?

Thank you again for the info!
Vasil Michev 119.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2022-01-18T15:43:55.907+00:00
No, it's not possible. There is no way to create a Team without creating a Group in the same time. You can however block people from creating Groups in the Outlook web app, by adjusting the OWA mailbox policy settings:

Set-OwaMailboxPolicy policyName -GroupCreationEnabled:$false

Then assign the policy to users. But that's for OWA only, people will still be able to create Groups from other endpoints.

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Disable teams mailbox creation

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