Can I change a Teams Townhall event from private to public after it has been published?

Question

I have a Teams Townhall event that has already been published as Private and I need to change it to public to allow external attendees, is this possible? If so, how can I do this?

Answer 1

Hi @Ian! 

Thank you for reaching out Microsoft Q&A! 

If I understand right, to remove the "Private" label from your event, you can: 

• Open your Microsoft Teams Calendar. 
• Right-click on the Town Hall event you want to update. 
• Uncheck Private to disable it. 

But, let me clarify about the Event Access setting: Once the Town Hall has been published, the Event Access option (e.g., People and Groups, Your Organization, or Public) cannot be changed. 

• If you originally selected Public, the event is open to everyone, including external attendees. 
• If you selected Your Organization, only people within your company or added as guests can join. 
• If you selected People and Groups, only those explicitly invited at the time of creation can attend. 

However, you can still manually add more attendees: Scroll down to the Invite Attendees section > Add their email addresses > Click Save to update the event. 

Important note: If a Teams Town Hall event has already been created and published with the Event Access set to either "Your organization" or "People and groups", you cannot change it to Public after publishing and can not add external attendees not in your organization. In this case, you will need to create a new event with Public access so that external attendees can join using their personal or business email addresses.

I hope this information is helpful! Let me know if you need anything else. 

Best Regards!

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