Use Audience Targeting on a SharePoint Page: Best Settings for Microsoft 365

When you manage a SharePoint site, you often need to show specific content to specific groups of people. Without audience targeting, everyone sees every web part on a page. This can clutter the view and confuse users. Audience targeting lets you display web parts only to people who match a set of rules, such as a Microsoft 365 group or a security group. This article explains how to enable and configure audience targeting on a SharePoint page. You will learn the best settings for Microsoft 365 to keep content relevant and reduce noise.

What Is Audience Targeting in SharePoint and How Does It Work?

Audience targeting in SharePoint allows you to control which users see a specific web part on a modern page. Instead of building separate pages for different departments or roles, you add one page and target each web part to the appropriate audience. The feature uses the Microsoft 365 group or security group that a user belongs to. When a user visits the page, SharePoint checks the user’s group memberships. If the user matches the target audience, the web part renders. If not, the web part is hidden entirely. This does not affect permissions — users who are not targeted still cannot see the content, but they also do not see a blank web part.

Prerequisites for using audience targeting include a SharePoint Online subscription (included in most Microsoft 365 plans) and site-level permission to edit pages. You must also have the appropriate groups created in Microsoft 365 or Azure AD. The feature works on modern pages only, not on classic wiki or web part pages. You can target any web part that supports the audience property, including the Highlighted Content, Events, News, and Quick Links web parts.

How the Audience Filter Is Applied

When you set an audience on a web part, SharePoint stores the group identifier in the page metadata. The filter is evaluated at runtime. If the current user is a member of the specified group, the web part is displayed. If the user is not a member, the web part is hidden. The page layout and other web parts remain unaffected. This means you can have one page that shows different content to different users without any custom code.

Steps to Enable and Configure Audience Targeting on a SharePoint Page

Before you can target web parts, you must enable the audience targeting feature at the tenant level. After that, you configure each web part individually.

Enable Audience Targeting in the SharePoint Admin Center

1. Sign in to the SharePoint admin center
   Go to https://admin.microsoft.com and select SharePoint in the left navigation. If you do not see SharePoint, expand Admin centers.
2. Open Org settings
   In the left menu, select Org settings. This page lists all tenant-wide settings.
3. Find the Audience targeting setting
   Scroll down to the SharePoint section. Click Audience targeting to open the settings panel.
4. Turn on the feature
   Set the toggle to On. Click Save. The change takes effect across all sites within a few minutes. No site collection restart is needed.

Target a Web Part on a Modern Page

1. Edit the page
   Navigate to the SharePoint site and open the page you want to modify. Click Edit at the top right of the page.
2. Select the web part to target
   Click the web part you want to restrict. The web part toolbar appears at the top. Click the Edit web part icon (pencil icon) on the left side of the toolbar.
3. Open the audience filter
   In the web part property pane on the right, scroll down to the Audience section. Click the field labeled Select a group or audience.
4. Choose a group
   Start typing a group name. SharePoint suggests Microsoft 365 groups, security groups, and distribution lists from your tenant. Select the group you want. You can add multiple groups by repeating this step.
5. Save and publish
   Click Apply in the property pane. Then click Publish at the top of the page to make the change live.

Test the Targeting

1. Open an InPrivate or Incognito browser window
   This prevents cached credentials from interfering with the test.
2. Sign in as a user who is NOT in the target group
   Go to the same page. The targeted web part should not appear. The rest of the page should render normally.
3. Sign in as a user who IS in the target group
   The web part should now be visible. If it does not appear, check that the user is a member of the group and that the group is spelled correctly in the audience field.

Common Mistakes When Using Audience Targeting and How to Avoid Them

Audience Targeting Does Not Work on the Page

The most common cause is that the audience targeting feature is not enabled at the tenant level. Without the tenant toggle, the audience filter in the web part property pane does not appear. Verify the setting in the SharePoint admin center under Org settings > Audience targeting. Also confirm that the page is a modern page. Classic pages do not support this feature.

Users See a Blank Web Part Instead of Nothing

This happens when the web part does not support audience targeting. Some web parts, such as the Image web part or the Text web part, do not have the audience property. Only web parts that display dynamic content, like Highlighted Content, Events, and News, include the audience filter. Use a supported web part or create a separate page for the content.

Groups Do Not Appear in the Audience Drop-down

The audience field searches groups in your Microsoft 365 tenant. If the group is a nested group (a group inside another group), it may not appear. SharePoint only shows top-level groups. Create a flat group structure for audience targeting. Also, distribution lists with more than 10,000 members may not appear. Use a security group or a Microsoft 365 group instead.

Targeting Slows Down Page Load

Each targeted web part requires a round-trip to check group membership. If you target 20 or more web parts on a single page, the page load time can increase noticeably. Limit the number of targeted web parts to 10 per page. If you need more targeting, consider using multiple pages or a hub site structure.

Item	Microsoft 365 Group	Security Group
Description	A group that includes membership, a shared mailbox, and a site	A group used to assign permissions and access to resources
Best for audience targeting	Yes, because it is easy to manage and syncs with Outlook	Yes, but requires manual membership updates
Supports dynamic membership	Yes, with Azure AD dynamic groups	Yes, with Azure AD dynamic groups
Visible in the audience field	Always	Always
Nested group support	No, only top-level groups appear	No, only top-level groups appear

After enabling audience targeting, you can now show the right content to the right people without building duplicate pages. Start by targeting one web part, such as a News web part, to a single Microsoft 365 group. Then expand to other web parts as you become comfortable with the feature. For advanced targeting, use dynamic groups in Azure AD to automatically include or exclude users based on job title or department. This keeps your audience lists up to date without manual maintenance.