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How to Hide a User from Address Lists: 2023 Guide

Many people want to know how to hide a user from the address lists because people who are using Office 365 and AD Connect, are pretty much sure that you may not be able to mark a mailbox that contains hide from address lists. All these things may not happen using the Office 365 portal and, if you are syncing users from your on-premises Active Directory.

How to Hide the User from Address Lists?

There are various users who use the same space from different locations. So, it is important to keep all these data and their user history confidential in order to get the best solution. When there is a user who gets synchronized in order to access the on-premise Active Directory, you can attempt to properly hide that particular user from the already available address book with the help of the Microsoft Office 365 portal. After accessing that, you’ll receive an error signhide-user-from-address-list

 

This kind of error will always happen because Office 365 knows about the sources of the users and it also knows that the sync from the Active Directory. So, while going to make any changes to the user in Office 365, the entire change will overwrite the next time on the Active Directory syncs.

Hiding a Mailbox from Address Lists Using Office 365 Portal

Before going to follow these steps, keep this thing in mind that, if you have created a user or shared mailbox using the Office 365 portal and the user is not synchronized from the Active Directory.

These are the steps to follow:

  • First login to the Exchange Admin Center with the help of Office 365 global admin credentials.
  • Go to the Recipients and then Mailboxes.
  • Now, find the user from the address list and double click on that. This is required to hide the user name.
  • Then, check the Hide from the address lists checkbox. Now click on Save.

If you have received any error containing the operation on mailbox failure because it is out of the current user’s write scope, in that case, these are the steps to follow to make the changes in Active Directory.

The address books download to the Outlook client one time every 24 hours. In this way, the user will still be visible in the address book for a single day. Users can also follow phone sync to public folders to make this job done.

Also Read: Tenant-to-Tenant Migration in Office 365

How to Hide the User from Address Lists Using Active Directory?

If you have already created a user or shared mailbox just by using the portal Office 365 but still the user is not going to synchronize from the Active Directory, then these are the steps to follow.

  • First, go and login to the Exchange Admin Center. This action needs Office 365 global admin credentials.
  • Now, go to the Recipients and then go to Mailboxes. If it is a shared mailbox, you can open the “share” folder to find this out.
  • Choose the user that you want to hide and now double click on that.
  • Check the hide from the address lists checkbox. Now click on the Save button.

If you receive any message regarding the operation on the mailbox failed because it is out of the current user’s write scope error, then you have to follow the below steps. These steps will lead you to change in the Active Directory.

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One thing is to keep in mind that the address books download and save to the Outlook client one time every 24 hours. In this way, the user will remain visible in the address book for a single day.

Steps to Follow for Hiding a User from the Address List Using Active Directory 

  • First, open the Active Directory Users and Computers.
  • Go to View-Advanced Features. This action will enable advanced features.
  • Then find and open the properties for the user whom you want to hide. Now, type the Attribute Editor tab.
  • Find and double-click on the “MS Exchange Hide From Address Lists”. It will let you change the value.
  • Now set the value “True” and save your entire changes.
  • Now, you have to set the mail nickname field. That should set to the first part of the primary email address.

After doing all these things, the change will be visible in the Office 365 portal just after the next AD Connect job that runs because it may take up to an hour. So, the address books will download to the Outlook client one time in 24 hours.

Conclusion

These are some of the proven steps to follow to get the best result to hide the user from the address book. These are rightly attributed and capable of providing an accurate result. Follow these steps if you really want to hide any user from the address list.

Salman Zafar

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