Remove group owner

Namespace: microsoft.graph

Remove an owner from a Microsoft 365 group or a security group through the owners navigation property. Once owners are assigned to a group, the last owner (a user object) of the group cannot be removed.

This API is available in the following national cloud deployments.

Global service	US Government L4	US Government L5 (DOD)	China operated by 21Vianet
✅	✅	✅	✅

Permissions

Choose the permission or permissions marked as least privileged for this API. Use a higher privileged permission or permissions only if your app requires it. For details about delegated and application permissions, see Permission types. To learn more about these permissions, see the permissions reference.

Permission type	Least privileged permissions	Higher privileged permissions
Delegated (work or school account)	Group.ReadWrite.All	Directory.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account)	Not supported.	Not supported.
Application	Group.ReadWrite.All	Directory.ReadWrite.All

In delegated scenarios, the signed-in user must also be assigned a supported Microsoft Entra role or a custom role with the required role permission. The following least privileged roles are supported for this operation:

Microsoft Entra role	Limitations	Key role permission
Group owners	Can modify all types of group owners	microsoft.directory/groups/owners/update
User Administrator	Can modify user owners only	microsoft.directory/groups/owners/update
Directory Writers	Can modify user owners only	microsoft.directory/groups/owners/update
Groups Administrator	Can modify all types of group owners	microsoft.directory/groups/owners/update
Exchange Administrator	Can modify owners of Microsoft 365 groups only	microsoft.directory/groups.unified/owners/update
SharePoint Administrator	Can modify owners of Microsoft 365 groups only	microsoft.directory/groups.unified/owners/update
Teams Administrator	Can modify owners of Microsoft 365 groups only	microsoft.directory/groups.unified/owners/update
Yammer Administrator	Can modify owners of Microsoft 365 groups only	microsoft.directory/groups.unified/owners/update
Intune Administrator	Can modify owners of security groups only	microsoft.directory/groups.security/owners/update
Knowledge Administrator	Can modify owners of security groups only	microsoft.directory/groups.security/owners/update
Knowledge Manager	Can modify owners of security groups only	microsoft.directory/groups.security/owners/update
Windows 365 Administrator	Can modify owners of security groups only	microsoft.directory/groups.security/owners/update

HTTP request

DELETE /groups/{id}/owners/{id}/$ref

Request headers

Name	Description
Authorization	Bearer {token}. Required. Learn more about authentication and authorization.

Request body

Don't supply a request body for this method.

Response

If successful, this method returns 204 No Content response code. It doesn't return anything in the response body.

Example

Request

The following example shows a request.

HTTP

DELETE https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups/{id}/owners/{id}/$ref

C#

// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 5.x

// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=csharp
await graphClient.Groups["{group-id}"].Owners["{directoryObject-id}"].Ref.DeleteAsync();

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

CLI

mgc groups owners ref-by-id delete --group-id {group-id} --directory-object-id {directoryObject-id}

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

Go

// Code snippets are only available for the latest major version. Current major version is $v1.*

// Dependencies
import (
	  "context"
	  msgraphsdk "github.com/microsoftgraph/msgraph-sdk-go"
	  //other-imports
)


// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=go
graphClient.Groups().ByGroupId("group-id").Owners().ByDirectoryObjectId("directoryObject-id").Ref().Delete(context.Background(), nil)

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

Java

// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 6.x

GraphServiceClient graphClient = new GraphServiceClient(requestAdapter);

graphClient.groups().byGroupId("{group-id}").owners().byDirectoryObjectId("{directoryObject-id}").ref().delete();

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

JavaScript

const options = {
	authProvider,
};

const client = Client.init(options);

await client.api('/groups/{id}/owners/{id}/$ref')
	.delete();

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

PHP

<?php
use Microsoft\Graph\GraphServiceClient;


$graphServiceClient = new GraphServiceClient($tokenRequestContext, $scopes);


$graphServiceClient->groups()->byGroupId('group-id')->owners()->byDirectoryObjectId('directoryObject-id')->ref()->delete()->wait();

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

PowerShell

Import-Module Microsoft.Graph.Groups

Remove-MgGroupOwnerDirectoryObjectByRef -GroupId $groupId -DirectoryObjectId $directoryObjectId

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

Python

# Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 1.x
from msgraph import GraphServiceClient
# To initialize your graph_client, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=python

await graph_client.groups.by_group_id('group-id').owners.by_directory_object_id('directoryObject-id').ref.delete()

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

In the request, specify the id of the directory object you want to remove after the $ref segment.

Response

The following example shows the response.

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

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