How do I remove the No Staff column in Bookings?

What the column is#

Older versions of the web app labelled the column ! No Staff. Posts from 2025 and 2026 call it "No Staff Assigned". It appears on every shared booking page, however many staff you add. The 2020 thread (26 "same question" votes) shows this well: the first reply told the poster to add staff and assign them to services, the poster had already done that, and later replies said the column stayed "no matter how many staff I add".

On its own, the empty column does no harm. It matters when appointments land in it. The Bookings FAQ says staff "get the email confirmation and the calendar invite when someone books an appointment with them". An appointment with no staff member has nobody to send that invite to, so nobody on the team gets it in Outlook until someone assigns it.

Hiding it from view#

• Week or Month view. This was the only workaround Microsoft support gave in 2020. The poster found it merges everyone's appointments together, so you lose the per-person day view of who is busy.
• Nothing else. There's no setting on the booking page, in the tenant settings or in PowerShell that removes the column. Microsoft doesn't document one, and the threads don't mention one.

Why appointments end up under No Staff#

These causes come from Microsoft Q&A threads. Microsoft Learn doesn't explain the behaviour.

1. The appointment was created without a staff member. When someone adds a booking in the calendar and doesn't pick a person, it goes into the No Staff column. In a 2021 thread, a Microsoft support agent explained that if you don't select any staff when setting up a booking, "it will show no staff assigned automatically".
2. The service setup doesn't match staff availability. An answer on a 2025 thread (five staff with identical hours, some student bookings still unassigned) said to check that each service has staff explicitly assigned, that staff hours match the service hours, and that nobody's Outlook calendar has blocks at those times.
3. Unexplained cases. In July 2026 someone reported that a service with a single staff member took two public bookings for the same slot, and that one of them showed No Staff. No API or manual edit was involved. The moderator was still investigating and no cause had been published as of September 2026. If you see duplicates like this, handle the customer first, then report it to Microsoft support with screenshots.

A related surprise: if a service has no staff assigned at all, customer bookings aren't necessarily left unassigned. In the 2021 thread, Microsoft support said Bookings assigns "an available staff member at random" in that case, and the poster found bookings going to people who weren't meant to deliver that service. If you want particular people to deliver a service, assign them to it explicitly.

Clearing it out#

1. Open the booking page, select Calendar, then switch to the day view.
2. Open each appointment in the No Staff column, assign a staff member and save. The 2025 answer confirms you can reassign appointments from that column by hand.
3. Look at the service each one came from. Open Services, choose the service and check Assign staff. If people are assigned but still aren't picked, work through why staff aren't bookable. Common causes are pending staff approval, missing working hours and calendars Bookings can't read.
4. If customers can choose a person, check whether "Anyone" is doing what you expect. See removing the Anyone option and how Bookings shares out appointments.
5. Before you delete a staff member, move their future appointments to someone else. Microsoft doesn't document what happens to an existing appointment when its only staff member is removed, so don't leave that to chance.

If the column fills up often, make checking it part of the daily routine for whoever runs the calendar. Until someone assigns them, those appointments aren't in anyone's calendar.

BookingsXP is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.