Allow co-organizer to see attendee list

Question

We create teaching sessions and hid the attendee list so that the learners cannot see each other's email addresses (required due to UK Data Protection Act). The Tutor needs to see the attendee list so that they know when everyone has logged in. Even adding them as a co-organizer doesn't allow them to be seen. This is a fundamental requirement for a lot of situations so why is it so difficult?

Answer 1

Hello @Philip Knowles,  

Thank you for reaching out to the Q&A forum! 

After receiving your update, I ran several tests in my own environment. I assigned myself as a Co‑organizer, and exactly as you described, when the organizer enables “Hide attendee list”, the Co‑organizer is still unable to see the attendee list. 

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I also tried to research this behavior, but at the moment there is no official Microsoft article that refers to a feature Hide attendee list. The only related feature documented by Microsoft is “Hide attendee names,” which serves a similar purpose by hiding attendee information from each other.  

I also checked the documented behavior for Hide attendee names, and according to Microsoft’s official support article: Hide attendee names in Microsoft Teams meetings and webinars - Microsoft Support

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Because of this, I completely agree with your point; and I think it is reasonable for us to expect that if “Hide attendee names” allows Co‑organizers to see the attendee list, then “Hide attendee list” should logically behave the same way as well. 

I believe this is indeed something that should be improved, especially for teaching or training scenarios where tutors need to monitor who has joined. 

Since this is a public community forum, I highly recommend submitting feedback directly through the Microsoft Feedback Portal so Microsoft Product Team can consider adding this feature in future updates.   

• Go to Help => Feedback => Send Feedback            
• Describe your suggestions in detail.        

This allows the development team to understand the needs of real users. Your feedback may help us revive or introduce features that make a real difference.         

If you've already submitted feedback, please share the link here, so not only me, but others can also vote it up. I truly appreciate you're understanding and patience as Microsoft continues to evolve the platform.            

Looking forward to hearing from you! 

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Answer 2

The suggested answer said that hiding attendee names is to comply with Data Protection. That restriction should not apply to the co-organizer but only to the attendees.