Why is Microsfot not bothered to hide the participant count from participants although many users want it?

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Why is Microsfot not bothered to hide the participant count from participants although many users want it?

Nandakumar P S 20

It just makes no sense why Microsoft wants to keep the participant count visible to participants and not provide an option to the hosts to hide it. I find Microsoft teams has the best features compared to other webinar platforms. I use it to teach music and that option is also available. What I don't like or think it is stupid is that we can never get into a webinar mode with public to market our learning products. The public sentiment will be impacted by looking at the number of participants. If it is just less than 10, they think they are in a wrong place and log off. This is such an important feature to market products and it is surprising that Microsoft has never thought about it, and does not care about what customers want, as I can see from the number of questions in the forum and inaction from Microsoft. Personal MS Office and Business MS office - both do not have this feature except when you conduct a Town Hall. But there are limitations in Town Hall that the participants cannot chat with the host, except through Q&A. Ridiculous..!

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Answer 1

Hello Nandakumar P S,

Thank you for taking the time to explain your concerns in detail. I’m sorry that the current Teams webinar experience does not fully support your needs. I understand why hiding the participant count can be important, particularly when webinars are used for teaching or promoting learning products.

1. Regarding Teams webinars

At present, Teams webinars do not provide organizers with a separate setting to hide the total participant count from attendees. Although attendee names can be hidden in supported scenarios, the participant count cannot currently be hidden through the webinar settings.

As a Community Forum Moderator, I’m unable to make product changes or provide information beyond what Microsoft has officially published. However, I genuinely appreciate you sharing how this limitation affects your events. I encourage you to submit your suggestion directly through the Teams Feedback Portal: Microsoft Teams · Community

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The Teams Product Team regularly reviews customer suggestions submitted through this portal. After submitting your feedback, you are welcome to return to this discussion and share the link. Other users with the same requirement can then view and upvote it, helping bring further visibility to your request.

2. Regarding chat in Teams town halls

You also mentioned that attendees cannot chat with the host in a Town hall and can only communicate through Q&A. I may need a little more information to fully understand the experience you are referring to, as I was able to enable and use Town hall chat during my testing.

When creating or editing the Town hall, please open Meeting options > Participation and set Meeting chat to "In-meeting only".

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Once the Town hall begins, the Chat pane should provide the following options:

Select "Everyone" to view and send messages in the chat feed with the entire Town hall audience.
Select "Event group" to communicate with only the organizers, co-organizers, and presenters. Messages in the Event group chat remain available after the Town hall ends.

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You can find additional information in the following Microsoft article: Chat in a town hall in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Support

Please note that Town hall chat is an advanced feature, so its availability may depend on your organization’s licensing and event configuration.

If the type of chat described above is different from what you need, could you please clarify how you would like attendees to communicate with the host? If possible, please also share a screenshot of what the attendees currently see, after hiding any personal information. I may have misunderstood part of your intended workflow, and the additional context would help me provide guidance that is more relevant to your needs.

Kind regards,

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Nandakumar P S 20 Reputation points

2026-07-22T11:14:51.9466667+00:00

This is what I am seeing when I set up a Town Hall. There is no option to chat but only Q&A. Your screen shot could be of a webinar where chat is allowed.
Anonymous

2026-07-23T10:00:07.3433333+00:00

Hi Nandakumar P S,

Thank you for sharing the screenshot. To clarify, the screenshot I previously provided was taken from a Teams Town hall, not a webinar. In my test environment, the Meeting chat option was available for the Town hall.

Since the Meeting chat setting is completely missing from your Town hall options, your organization may have an event policy that prevents organizers from enabling attendee chat. Could you please ask your IT administrator to review the relevant policy in the Teams admin center?

They can go to Meetings > Events policies, open the policy assigned to your account, and review the "Town hall chat experience" setting. Microsoft documents the following behavior:

Optimized: Organizers can turn on chat for Town hall attendees.

None: Organizers cannot turn on attendee chat, and the Meeting chat option will not be available.

I tested this by changing "Town hall chat experience" to "None", and the Meeting chat option disappeared from my Town hall settings as well, which matches the behavior shown in your screenshot.

You can share the following official article with your IT administrator: Manage chat for Teams events - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

Please ask your administrator to confirm whether the policy assigned to your account is set to None. If appropriate for your organization, they can change it to Optimized and allow time for the policy update to take effect before you test the Town hall again.

Kind regards,