Is it possible to hide an Office 365 Groups from the GAL but not the Exchange Client

Question

Is it possible to hide groups from a Global Address Book, but still allow users to browse for them in 'Groups' and request to join.

I have tried setting HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled to true, but it hides it from 'Groups' as well.

If it's not possible, is there some way to filter specific users from the Global Address Book?

Answer 1

Those are two separate parameters and you can use them independently:

Get-UnifiedGroup | ? {$_.HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled} | select Name,HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled,HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled

Name                                              HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled
----                                              -------------------------------- -----------------------------
Team688_1fc47b5e-b6ca-44b4-ae1b-318fe0846d7a                                 False                          True
Office365_f961c9ab-4de8-4751-8172-fdd2efad082e                                True                          True

However, setting any of these to True will result in the group not being visible/exposed in Outlook, so neither is appropriate for your scenario. If you want users to browse for Groups in Outlook, you need them visible, as in not hidden in the GAL.

Answer 2

Hi @Maddi ,

You can hide groups from the GAL but users can still discover groups.

https://outlook.office.com/mail/