Teams now hides the Office 365 Groups that it creates from Exchange clients (Outlook, OWA, and the mobile apps). That’s as it should be for groups created for new teams. If you want to hide groups created for older teams, you can run the Set-UnifiedGroup cmdlet, but that soon becomes boring when you might have hundreds of groups to process. PowerShell to the rescue once again. https://www.petri.com/hiding-office-365-groups-exchange-clients

As I say in the piece, the change is rolling out... and while the change is effective in the back-end (i.e. you can set groups to be hidden from Exchange clients now), some client updates are also necessary. These will come in OWA and Outlook (to respect the flag) and Teams (to set the flag). Don't be so impatient. As to ordered hash tables, I used these a lot to capture Office 365 data with PowerShell. Once in the hash table, you can do so much with data... as proven here.

Just FYI all as no one had actually posted commands yet to get this done, i thought i would asssit. I used some of the links and adapted the power shell so that it works for me in the most direct way. First examine the problem, my groups that were showing the GAL had HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled set to both true and false, but ALWAYS had HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled set to false. So that is the property i need to modify in order to correct the issue. First we need to connect to office365 powershell. I have opened a powershell command prompt locally and run the following commands:$UserCredential = Get-Credential $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection Import-PSSession $Session -DisableNameChecking Second we run the command to see how many groups are affected: Get-UnifiedGroup -ResultSize Unlimited | select Name, DisplayName, HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled, HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled | where {$_.HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled -eq $False} Third We dump those groups to a CSV file. Make sure the c:\temp\teams\ path exists or script will fail.Get-UnifiedGroup -ResultSize Unlimited | select Name, DisplayName, HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled, HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled | where {$_.HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled -eq $False} | Export-csv -Path c:\temp\teams\HiddenGroups1.csv -NoTypeInformation -Encoding Ascii Fourth, we fix them. I loaded this code into its own .ps1 file and ran it from the command line, but i think you could paste in the code directly.$GroupList = Import-CSV "c:\temp\teams\HiddenGroups1.csv" ForEach ($G in $GroupList) { If ($G.HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled -eq "FALSE") { Write-Host "Hiding" $G.DisplayName "from Exchange Clients" Set-UnifiedGroup -Identity $G.Name -HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled:$True } }Worked for all but two test groups, not sure why those ones it did not work for, but i just deleted them as they were from old tests. hope it helps someone.

PhilHemingwaySTV I'm sure that every team does turn up in the GAL, but only if an action is taken to update its HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled property. All teams created through team-aware admin interfaces set this property to $False. If you create using an ISV app, PowerShell, or some Graph-enabled app, you might find that the property is set to $True. For instance, even Teams sets the property to $True for the special team it creates to control who's allowed to create approvals templates. But the general point holds true: teams created through Teams set HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled to $False.

That has not been the case in our environment, and I just closed a ticket with Microsoft today, confirming as much.Here's the relevant part of their email response, "When you create it from PowerShell or the Teams admin center it will be visible. Please create from the Teams App and observe the behavior (the group should be hidden by default)."Specifically, teams created through the Teams admin interface are visible in the GAL. We require that new teams be created by admins, so our users are prevented from creating their own in the app... and for admins it was natural to create teams through the Teams admin interface. Every last one since we deployed Teams to the company is showing in the GAL. I'd have to get a colleague to run the Exchange PowerShell command for me since I'm not the Exchange admin, but I don't doubt at all they're set to $True.So it's pretty frustrating that Microsoft documentation says when you create a team in Teams it will not show in the GAL, because this has not been the case at all for our organization, and I feel like it's a glaring error that needs to be corrected.

TonyRedmond Bit of a shame that there's no easy flick switch to make the M365 Group that arises as a result of a Team being created, to be visible in Exchange Clients, instead we're having to resort to PowerShell + admin rights. The M365 Group Calendar itself is probably one of the most useful - as any Teams Channel Meeting scheduled within a Team will appear in that Team's M365 Group Calendar. However, for most teams created after 2018, this Group Calendar can't be used to schedule appointments which don't have a meeting associated with it. Ironically there's also a Group Calendar web part in SharePoint Modern! Which now is only able to display Teams Meetings. The Event List that can be created as part of a SharePoint site is not useful in this regard, as it requires the end user to sync the "calendar" (which is a SharePoint list) to Outlook manually, and of course, it won't have all of their Teams Channel Meetings. So whilst I appreciate others in here that are frustrated with the Groups surfacing in Exchange Clients, there's another batch of us who are frustrated at exactly the reverse 😂

Hiding Office 365 Groups Created by Teams from Exchange Clients

VasilMichev
MVP
Apr 05, 2018
Hm, so am I to assume that it actually works for you? None of the Teams I toggled the flags for have disappeared from either Outlook and OWA. And while Outlook can be excused as I'm on the deferred channel, shouldn't OWA at least be aware of the flags? Sigh...

P.S. Ordered hash tables and such, color me impressed :)
- TonyRedmond
  MVP
  Apr 05, 2018
  As I say in the piece, the change is rolling out... and while the change is effective in the back-end (i.e. you can set groups to be hidden from Exchange clients now), some client updates are also necessary. These will come in OWA and Outlook (to respect the flag) and Teams (to set the flag). Don't be so impatient.
  
  As to ordered hash tables, I used these a lot to capture Office 365 data with PowerShell. Once in the hash table, you can do so much with data... as proven here.
  - VasilMichev
    MVP
    Apr 24, 2018
    This seems to be live now, both in OWA and Outlook (9126.2152).
Ivan54
Bronze Contributor
Apr 24, 2018
I get the idea or desire to hide groups created by teams, but there is one thing I'm missing in that scenario that works with email, but currently doesn't with teams.
How do I contact a group that I'm not a member of ? This works in an email/distribution list scenario, but I haven't figured it out in Teams.
- TonyRedmond
  MVP
  Apr 24, 2018
  Teams doesn't appear in an address list like other mail-enabled objects unless its Office 365 Group is not hidden from the lists, so it is hard to know when private teams are available. Public teams can be found by the Join or Create a team option, which presents a list of suggested public teams available to the user. The search function on the same screen can be used to find other public teams that don't make the suggested list, which is determined by reference to signals in the Graph. Private teams don't appear in suggestions, so the only way to join them is to contact the team owner (how you learn about the existence of the team is another matter - perhaps via a coffee room conversation?).
  - Ivan54
    Bronze Contributor
    Apr 24, 2018
    all true, but doesn't really solve the whole distribution list demand. When I want to move away from Outlook to Teams, I need to have the option to contact other departments or groups without being part of that department, right?
    Its very unlikely for me as a member of the "IT Team" to also be a member of the "Sales TEAM" and therefore I have no option to contact the whole sales team, without adding every single member into a private chat
Ali Fadavinia
Iron Contributor
Jan 21, 2021
TonyRedmond
Set-UnifiedGroup -Identity Team1 -HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled:$True
it served the purpose best for me - thanks!
PhilHemingwaySTV
Iron Contributor
Jul 02, 2021
TonyRedmond This simply is not true. Every single team we create has its O365 group show up in the GAL.
- TonyRedmond
  MVP
  Jul 02, 2021
  PhilHemingwaySTV I'm sure that every team does turn up in the GAL, but only if an action is taken to update its HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled property. All teams created through team-aware admin interfaces set this property to $False. If you create using an ISV app, PowerShell, or some Graph-enabled app, you might find that the property is set to $True. For instance, even Teams sets the property to $True for the special team it creates to control who's allowed to create approvals templates. But the general point holds true: teams created through Teams set HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled to $False.
  - PhilHemingwaySTV
    Iron Contributor
    Jul 06, 2021
    That has not been the case in our environment, and I just closed a ticket with Microsoft today, confirming as much.
    
    Here's the relevant part of their email response, "When you create it from PowerShell or the Teams admin center it will be visible. Please create from the Teams App and observe the behavior (the group should be hidden by default)."
    
    Specifically, teams created through the Teams admin interface are visible in the GAL. We require that new teams be created by admins, so our users are prevented from creating their own in the app... and for admins it was natural to create teams through the Teams admin interface. Every last one since we deployed Teams to the company is showing in the GAL. I'd have to get a colleague to run the Exchange PowerShell command for me since I'm not the Exchange admin, but I don't doubt at all they're set to $True.
    
    So it's pretty frustrating that Microsoft documentation says when you create a team in Teams it will not show in the GAL, because this has not been the case at all for our organization, and I feel like it's a glaring error that needs to be corrected.

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Hiding Office 365 Groups Created by Teams from Exchange Clients

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