Remove the ability for users to unsubscribe from a group.
Currently there is no option to prevent users from unsubscribing to an O365 group. This can cause undesired behavior for communications to specfic groups or manditory groups such as ALL@company.com.


We’re still thinking about this suggestion. In the meantime, please be aware that using Dynamic Membership rules will define membership criteria that will force individuals to remain as members of a group. This issue was also highlighted in the comments below. Please keep the feedback/votes coming! Thanks!
53 comments
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Jon Carriere commented
Yes please. In Education we need this.
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Sanjay Dhingra commented
In Education, it is essential that students(members) should not be able to leave their Class Team. For members it should be locked and only owners can remove them.
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Mark McC commented
Agree that this is necessary for all the reasons listed below.
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David Conradie commented
Just received an update from MS saying "be aware that using Dynamic Membership rules will define membership criteria that will force individuals to remain as members of a group" - this doesn't address the issue. The issue is not that members LEAVE the group; in this case the issue is that members can UNSUBSCRIBE from the group and therefore they stop receiving group emails in their inbox. Some group owners still use their groups as DLs - it's vital they can rely on group members remaining subscribed.
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Anonymous commented
I'm getting ready to remove a lot of my groups and rebuild add as distribution list to fix this. I have users that don't understand they have unsubscribed and are frustrated they are not getting emails.
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Anonymous commented
This is a must-have. We converted our staff distribution list to an Office 365 group to leverage its use in Teams. The other day, I got an email from our president saying that he wasn't receiving our staff emails anymore and didn't know why. A review of the audit logs revealed that he had somehow left the group himself inadvertently, which was not his intention. I think it's time to provide admins the ability to ensure that users remain members of groups/teams to which they are assigned unless and until that changes.
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Chris commented
This is absolutely needed before I can justify migration from DLs to 365 groups. I have to be able to centrally manage them and prevent people from leaving our mandatory groups. We've been asking for this for quite some time...how has this not yet been implemented?
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Rich commented
Seriously! Microsoft wants us to stop using distribution groups without offering an alternative that achieves the same result?! Microsoft: How do you suggest we send communication when we want to be sure it reaches everyone in a particular group, as in the case of "all employees" for instance? The only way I can see is that each user must create and update their own local Outlook contact group... which would be near impossible for most users to keep up to date. Additionally, a user is limited to the number of contacts in an Outlook contact group (actually it's a limit to data size - and it's not much). So, there's NO alternative. My Microsoft loyalty is getting very weak.
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AM commented
This is a must have requirement. Please stop thinking about it and implement it. Listen to your customers.
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AT commented
Adding to this chorus, this needs to be available.
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Connor Mullaney commented
Three years later and still not much being done. I appreciate the new admin response but I'm curious what is being thought about? Why hasn't this been done yet? Does it interfere with the O365 groups vision? My role and companies(s) environments I manage has changed but this still applies more than ever as we look at moving on prem DGs to O365 groups.
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Elijah Longwell commented
Is this something that is even on the radar? Our org would love to take advantage of groups instead of distribution lists, but this is the key functionality keeping us from being able to do it. I know we're all tired of getting the "you should make a group instead!" prompt when we go to make a distro list, but the reality is that there just isn't parity there between the two services.
Furthermore, can you please change the "Try This Instead" suggestion that is highlighted as the best answer? It's explicitly the oposite of what we are asking for here.
This is a pretty integral feature for most organizations that needs to be fixed if Microsoft _actually_ wants to phase out distro lists for groups. It would be great to at least get an acknowledgment that this is a known pain point instead of a disregarding and incorrect answer.
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Christina commented
The "Try this instead" has been wrong for over 2 years at this point - they completely misinterpreted the request.
For example, we do not want to offer students the ability to unsubscribe from emails from the Registrar's office. They need to get email from the Registrar whether they like it or not. Some feature of Office 365 was automatically inserting a link to unsubscribe at the bottom of various messages and we wanted to remove that link.
On the other hand, I have not seen the "Getting too much email from x? You can unsubscribe." link lately, so maybe that feature no longer exists. Taking back my votes so I can use them elsewhere...
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ckellsworth commented
The Try this is WRONG how do we get an admin to fix that? I was also 1/2 way through setting up 4 o365 groups for a client and realized that i cannot prevent people from unfollowing... reverted back to Dynamic Distro groups.
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Kyle Ray commented
Yes. We need the ability to make membership in certain groups mandatory.
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Anonymous commented
The following, "Follow the instructions here to unsubscribe to a group:" makes it clear that the intent of the request is NOT understood. Please read again. It is important to NOT allow a user to unsubscribe from groups that the entity has determined all users should be a part of (they should get the emails, access to the group mailbox...).
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Leif commented
We still need this. I'm really tired of having distribution groups and matching O365 groups...
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Jason commented
Original Post says "REMOVE the ability for users to unsubscribe from a group."
It is honestly ridiculous that this even needs to be a request for an enterprise level domain.
This should be part of the normal functionality. -
Jonathan Isaacs commented
If you don't want to enable it through the UI, please give us a PowerShell cmd we can run!
Without this functionality, we cannot move distribution groups to O365 groups.
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Leif commented
If this issue were fixed, we could replace almost all of our distribution lists with office 365 groups. Please review admin response