Guide: How can you automatically hide Microsoft 365 Address Book Groups in Outlook?

Long ago, Microsoft started 365 Groups (formerly known as Office 365 Groups) in Outlook as a way to provide businesses with a shared calendar, email inbox, and SharePoint site. Eventually, this evolved into a mature collaboration and security model, with Microsoft Teams at the forefront.

You’re probably wondering, “Why is this an important update? When I create a team in Microsoft Teams, I don’t see the group or the underlying email address in Outlook.”

Update: Automatically hide Group in Outlook

That’s right! Microsoft updated it a while ago to automatically hide the group and email address in Outlook.

This update is relevant for businesses with a provisioning solution, as these solutions often form a Microsoft 365 group – and then connect a team in Microsoft Teams or a team site in SharePoint Online. Unfortunately, the following happens in that case:

A newly equipped Microsoft 365 group that appears in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center …

… and also in the general directory in Outlook.

Powershell

A PowerShell command lets you hide the Microsoft 365 group. But this is not easy to integrate into a provisioning solution.

Microsoft comes to the rescue! This release introduces two new features to the Group Resource Type in Microsoft Graph: hideFromOutlookClients and hideFromAddressLists.

Setting the hideFromOutlookClients property to True prevents the group from appearing in outlook’s left navigation. The group name is not converted while creating a new message in Outlook. In addition, the hideFromAddressLists property is also set to True to prevent the group from appearing in the Global Address List (GAL).