Managing Users in a Zoom Webinar

The host of a Zoom Webinar can manage both panelists and attendees. By clicking Participants in your host controls, you can manage the panelists and attendees in your webinar. This includes promoting a panelist to co-host or attendee to panelist, demoting panelists to attendee, unmuting, stopping video, and more.

How to Access the Participants Panel

Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
Start a webinar as the host.
Click on Participants in the webinar controls.
The Participants panel will be on right side of your screen. The host, co-hosts, and panelists will be listed in the Panelist tab and the attendees will be listed the Attendees tab.

How to Manage Panelists
Hover over over the panelist's name and click More. You will see the following options to manage participants:

Mute / Ask to Unmute: Mute or unmute the panelist. They need to accept the unmute prompt before they are unmuted.
Chat: Open the chat window to send messages directly to the panelist.
Make Host: Assign the panelist to be the host. There can only be one host.
Make Co-Host / Withdraw Co-host permission: Assign the panelist to be a co-host. You can have an unlimited number of co-hosts.
Change Role to Attendee: Click this to change the panelist's role to an attendee.
Rename: Change the panelist's name that is displayed to other participants.
- Note: To change your own name that is displayed, hover over your name in the participants list and click Rename. This change only applies to the current webinar. To permanently change your name, see My Profile.
Assign to Type Closed Captions: Assign the panelist to type Closed Caption during the webinar.
Put on hold: Place the panelist on hold. This will temporarily remove them from the webinar so that they cannot hear you, see your screen share, or your video, as well cannot be heard, seen, or share content. Their webinar screen will change to the message: "Please wait, the meeting host will let you in soon", followed by the name and date of the webinar.
Remove: Remove the panelist from the webinar. They will not be able to rejoin unless you allow participants and panelists to rejoin.

Changing a Panelist to Attendee

Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
Start a webinar as the host.
Click Participants .
Click the Panelists tab.
Hover over the name of the panelist you want to make an attendee and click on More.
Click Change Role to Attendee.

How to Manage Attendees
On the Attendees tab, you will see the list of present attendees with any non-verbal feedback they have selected next to their name. When there are 7 or more attendees, the search bar will be available at the top of the list, allowing you to quickly search for a specific attendee.

To manage attendees, hover over the attendee's name and click More. You will see the following options:

Allow to Talk: Allow the attendee to unmute and speak in the webinar. The participant will receive a prompt to confirm if they want to unmute or stay muted. If you already allowed a participant to talk but they decided to stay muted, click Ask to Unmute to prompt them to unmute their mic. All participants will be able to hear them. Note: While unmuted, the attendee's profile picture and name is displayed to the host and panelists. Only their name is displayed to other attendees.

If you allowed the attendee to talk, you will see these options:

Mute / Ask to Unmute: Mute or unmute the attendee. They need to accept the unmute prompt before they are unmuted.
Disable talking: Revoke the attendee's ability to talk. This will mute the participant and prevent them from unmuting themselves.
Lower Hand: Lower the participant's hand. Their position in the participants will move down after the participants with their hand raised.
Chat: Open the chat window to send messages directly to the attendee.
Promote to panelist: Make the attendee a panelist.
Rename: Change the attendee's name that is displayed to other attendees.
Remove: Remove the attendee from the webinar. Remove the panelist from the webinar. They will not be able to rejoin unless you allow the attendee to rejoin.

At the bottom of the list of attendees, you will see the Lower All Hands option, which will lower all raised hands. This does not mute attendees that raised their hand and were unmuted.