Host Key Issues

[mbishop]

I want to allow another person to log-in and claim host for my meeting.  I have tested out the host key many, many times on my end by logging in with my personal unpaid Zoom account and seeing if I'm able to claim host of the meeting that was set-up with my paid work Zoom account, and every single time it works just fine for me. However, others are telling me that sometimes they can't even see the claim host button, and sometimes the host key is working for them and sometimes it does not.

The other day, three of us logged in to test it, and two of us were able to successfully claim host with no issues, but the third person was not able to and kept getting invalid host key error.

We're all working remotely in different areas, so there is no way for me to physically be with the people who are having the issues and walk them through it to triple check what they are doing on their end and be able to see the error happen in real time. 

I'm at my wits end because my colleagues are telling me that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Sometimes they can see claim host, sometimes they can't, but I keep testing it and testing it from my computer and have never once had an issue, HELP!

[Ray_Harwood]

Hi, @mbishop.

I have to say I’ve never heard of Host Key not working when the meeting was set up properly. The fact that some can make it work and others can’t is even more unusual. My first inclination is that the Host Key is not being entered properly by some, and my suggestion is to Edit the Host Key and make it something relatively easy to hand-type. When copy/pasting or even hand entering into a blind password field, you never really know if you got it right. 

Edit the Host Key by clicking the Edit button to the right of the Host Key. See this Zoom Support article for additional info:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205172555-Using-your-host-key 

Make it something easy to type, but not easy to guess.

For security purposes, I normally recommend changing the Host Key once a quarter, or once a month if you hand it out to more than a trusted few.