Before You Begin:
- Site Admin permissions are required. These are site-wide settings that apply to every member.
- Decide as a team whether members should see each other's email addresses before you change this. Turning it off affects profiles, directories, session attendee lists, discussions, feeds, and Messenger all at once.
- Members also have their own privacy controls. See Profile Privacy Settings for how the two layers interact.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Enable Emails is a site-level setting that allows Site Admins to control the visibility of individual and member email addresses throughout the platform.
- Click the Site Admin gear icon in the upper right corner.
- Go to Security & Privacy, then User & Profile.
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Locate the Enable Emails toggle and set it on or off for your site.
What Members See When Emails Are Disabled
By default, the Enable Emails setting is on; however, Site Admins can disable it. When disabled, members' email addresses will NOT be visible to other members on the site. This includes when viewing members within:
- Member Profiles
- Site and group-level directories, as well as saved contacts
- Session attendee directory
- Discussions and social feed posts, comments, and replies
- Messenger
If the Enable Emails setting is DISABLED, the only place where user emails are visible is for Site Admins in the Users section of the admin area.
How Disabled Options Appear on the Member Settings Page
When your site does not offer a feature, its controls are hidden entirely from the member Settings page rather than shown as greyed-out rows. If you disable Enable Emails, members will not see a Hide only my email control at all. The same applies elsewhere: a site without Messenger shows members no Messenger section and no direct message notification settings, and a site without the daily digest shows no daily digest row. An absent control is expected behavior for that configuration, not a defect — this is worth knowing before you investigate a member report that a setting has "disappeared."
"User & Profile" Settings Page to Centralize Site-Level Settings
A section within the Site Admin area has been created to provide a central location for various site-level settings for users.
Along with the Enable Emails setting, the site-level settings for allowing members to schedule 1-on-1 meetings and for enabling Messaging have also been moved here.
Common Pitfalls
- Investigating a "missing" member setting as a bug: Disabled site options are hidden from the member Settings page, not greyed out. Check what you have turned off under User & Profile before escalating.
- Members reporting they cannot find direct message settings: Check the Messaging setting here first, then have the member check Allow other users to send me messages on their own Settings card. Either one being off hides those rows.
- Expecting this to hide emails from admins: It does not. Site Admins can always see member emails in the Users section of the admin area.
- Assuming this overrides member choices: It works the other way around. This setting is the outer gate — when it is on, individual members still control their own email visibility through their profile privacy settings.
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