Bug: Unable to add owners / members to a new Office 365 group containing only one user (owner)

Copper Contributor

When creating a new Office 365 group (without Teams) there is no way adding new members. The only way is to contact administrator and add people using the admin site. 

 

When having more than one owner / members you get the members "icon" in the upper right. As you can see in the picture it's missing. It's missing the "counter" because Office 365 is counting one person less then it actually is in the group!

 

If you go to the permission then you add people to the SharePoint site and not the group!

 

How to recreate the issue:

1. Go to SharePoint-Admin page -> Groups -> Create new group

2. Add yourself as owner and DON'T add members. Make the group private (not sure if this has anything with the issue) -> create
3. Try to add new members to the group (not the site) without going to the sharepoint-administration site.

 

4 Replies

You should get the relevant controls even when only a single group member exists. Try refreshing the page, see if it shows then. If it still doesn't, use a different entry points for Groups, such as OWA or Outlook.

 

Not a big fan of the new UI to be honest...

I think the problem is the "counter". It always reports one less members then it actually is. So if there is only 1 owner then SharePoint probably count it as 0 and just hide it.

I can't find any place in Outlook where you can add new members when you're the only one having access to the group. I don't get the group in the "groups" section. And if you "discover" new groups and try to find the group you get the option to "Ask to become a member"! (when you already is the owner!) Yes I've check the admin and I'm the owner of that group and I get access to the SharePoint site as well.

 

The bug is on new and (weeks) old Office 365 groups! This issue has been like this for some weeks now.  We noticed the problem after we deployed a "order-system" for new Office 365 groups and Teams. Got the same issue when creating new Office 365 groups in the standard UI.

I cannot reproduce this in my tenant, so my advice is to open a support case and have it properly investigated.

Does adding the owner as a member fix the issue for you? So the person is listed twice, as owner and also as member?