Forum Discussion
Hide email addresses in invite to external users
Hi,
I send an invite via Teams Calendar to two individuals who are external to my organisation.
The invitation they both receive shows the email addresses of all the invitees.
Is there a way to prevent this?
Thanks
Hi,
Probably the simplest way to do this is to create the meeting in Outlook as a Teams meeting. This inserts a unique hyperlink in the calendar event ('Join Microsoft Teams Meeting'). Then you can send copy and paste the link into separate emails to the external and internal people or send one email with them all in the Bcc field.
The other way of doing it is to create the meeting in Outlook as a Teams meeting with just one of the attendees, it doesn't matter who. Send the invite as you normally would, then reopen the calendar event and click the Forward button (Ctrl+F). Enter the next attendee's email in the To field, but be sure to delete text in the email/calendar invite that details previous invite (this is the text beneath '-----Original Appointment-----'). Leave the message text that you want this attendee to see, along with the unique 'Join Microsoft Teams Meeting' hyperlink. Then repeat this for each attendee.
I've tested this last method with 3 separate private email accounts (hotmail, outlook and gmail) and neither one can see any of the other attendee's information either in the email they receive or the calendar event itself.
Hope that helps - please let me know.
18 Replies
You could create separate calendar invites for each attendee that are near identical other than the recipient email address being different. This will ensure each person gets a calendar invite without being able to see anyone else's email address. Because it's a proper ics file it will be added to their calendar. Adding external emails to the resources field is not a full proof solution because if someone clicks reply all the email addresses will become visible. Alternatively, you could use Salepager to send BCC Outlook calendar invites that hide attendee emails from each recipient.
PhilHesketh Add them as a resource in the scheduling assistant tab
We've had issues with this and it's been trial and error.
Creating a Teams invite and adding external emails to the 'resources' field will blind copy them but if they 'reply all' they will see each others' email addresses. We also had instances where email addresses showed inside the meeting in the participants panel - so we moved away from this.
We now create a Teams invite - invite only internal people, copy the 'join meeting' hyperlink and send this out in separate messages to the external guests. This makes them anonymous attendees and means their personal details are not associated with the Teams meeting.
However, if an external guest has a Teams account when they join the meeting the email associated with their Teams account will show inside the meeting.
If they don't have a Teams account - they join via browser and are given an option to enter their name - whatever they enter shows to others, so we advise using just first names.
I'm still looking into a workaround for hiding personal details of those with a Teams account.
Microsoft Teams just wasn't designed for confidential use!
jackwillrawlMicrosoft
Just wondering if there is a solution for hiding the email address of individuals who do join a teams call from an external organisation?
- You can use Outlook on the web to schedule a Teams meeting with the option ”hide attendee list”. But that will only prevent the ”hiding” until the meeting begins. Unless the invitees simply join as anonymous users, not being signed in anywhere, just clicking on a meeting link in a browser.
Hi,
Probably the simplest way to do this is to create the meeting in Outlook as a Teams meeting. This inserts a unique hyperlink in the calendar event ('Join Microsoft Teams Meeting'). Then you can send copy and paste the link into separate emails to the external and internal people or send one email with them all in the Bcc field.
The other way of doing it is to create the meeting in Outlook as a Teams meeting with just one of the attendees, it doesn't matter who. Send the invite as you normally would, then reopen the calendar event and click the Forward button (Ctrl+F). Enter the next attendee's email in the To field, but be sure to delete text in the email/calendar invite that details previous invite (this is the text beneath '-----Original Appointment-----'). Leave the message text that you want this attendee to see, along with the unique 'Join Microsoft Teams Meeting' hyperlink. Then repeat this for each attendee.
I've tested this last method with 3 separate private email accounts (hotmail, outlook and gmail) and neither one can see any of the other attendee's information either in the email they receive or the calendar event itself.
Hope that helps - please let me know.
I tried 3rd option to forward the invitation which I received one by one to external users but they in calendar they are still able to see all emails I have. Invited. Does anyone have solution for this ?
Sonukumar0004 no, this isn't possible currently. It sounds like the best thing for you might be to use the first option I described above; create the teams meeting with an internal user and simply email the unique 'Click here to join the meeting' hyperlink to your additional external attendees separately, along with the meeting details.
They won't receive a calendar invite though unfortunately and you'll need to advise them they shouldn't be logged into Microsoft on their browser, if they wish to remain anonymous to the other attendees.
The external.attendees will then have the option to enter a name when they join the meeting. Hope that helps
- Hence my reply above yours.
Hi PhilHesketh ,
I can think of one way around it,
Create the meeting in Outlook as a Teams meeting, just add those external users in. Send it. Then add all the internal users. The copy of the meeting those 2 external users have will only show each other.
Be wary of updating the meeting, when you do that all invitees will be shown.
Thank you Andrew Hodges,
however I do not want the external users to see each other's email address.
Thanks
Create the teams meeting for all internal users, copy the join info and paste it into 2 separate invites for the external users.
You may want to check what is shown to everyone when the users join in the contact card though. Looks like there is no way to currently bcc attendees.
