How to Solve Common Microsoft Teams Errors

Microsoft Teams is an established and widespread application with over 270 million monthly active users as of January 2022.  However, no technology functions flawlessly 100% of the time, and when issues and errors happen it can be frustrating and time consuming. In this blog, we’ve outlined seven of the most common Microsoft Teams error messages in Microsoft Teams and how you can troubleshoot them to get back to business.   

Determining Your Platform

The first thing to determine when you are experiencing a new or unexpected issue is whether it’s related to the Teams platform that you’re using. If you’re using the desktop application, try opening the web version of Teams. If you’re using the web browser, try opening the desktop application. If you are able to access Teams you’ve determined that your issue is with your default application.   

If the issue is related to the desktop application, you can try troubleshooting steps such as clearing the cache, force quitting, and signing out of Teams and back in again.  

You can also check the Microsoft Teams health status in the Admin Portal. Found under ‘Health’, the health status will indicate if there are issues with the Teams service originating directly from Microsoft. If issues are listed here, you will likely need to wait for Microsoft to fix things. Continue to check back, as often solutions are implemented from Microsoft quickly, especially for widespread outage issues.  

Common Microsoft Teams Errors

Microphone, webcam, and audio issues

When other meeting participants can’t see or hear you, it usually boils down to the wrong device selected. You can find device settings in a Teams call by clicking on the ellipses labelled ‘More’, then selecting ‘Device settings’. If you’re certain you have the correct device selected and it’s still not working, try plugging in a different one and see if it works. . If you’re certain you have the correct device selected and it’s still not working, try plugging in a different one and seeing if it works.

Before joining a meeting, you can test your audio and visual settings by clicking on ‘More options” (the ellipses) in the top right-hand corner of the Teams window, then clicking ‘Settings’ and ‘Devices’. After you’ve selected your devices, you can make a test call to ensure they will function properly once you have joined your meeting.  

Inability to create new Teams

Looking to create a new Team but can’t figure out how? The option to join or create a Team will appear at the bottom of your Teams list in the left-hand navigation. When you click ‘Join or create a Team’, if the option to create a Team is not there, this has likely been turned off by your IT administrator. This functionality is often limited to prevent creating duplicate Teams, and to ensure that Teams follow governance and naming conventions set by the organization.  

Inability to add guests to a Team

Are you trying to add an external guest to your Team and are seeing an error message? An external guest is anyone without an email in your tenancy. For example, a guest of Regroove would be anyone without an @regroove.ca email address. This is likely the result of a policy preventing users from inviting guests to Teams, either at the Team or at the administrative level. If you need to add a guest to a Team, contact your IT administrator to find out more about your internal policies.    

Team deletion also removed Planner and OneNote

Did you delete a Team and then try to find the Planner, OneNote, or other associated applications that were tied to that Team? When a Team is deleted, the Microsoft 365 Group that houses all the tied applications are also deleted. Your IT administrator will likely be able to restore the Team, as well as the associated applications. We highly recommend archiving Teams rather than deleting them for this reason. Teams rather than deleting them for this reason.

Renaming a Teams channel resulted in losing access to channel files

This is a longstanding issue that we’ve previously discussed at Regroove. This occurs because renaming a channel does not subsequently rename the documents folder in the corresponding SharePoint Team site. The good news is that Microsoft is currently working on fixing this issue. For now, we recommend creating a new channel and moving relevant files there before deleting the original file.  

Teams is slow during video meetings

Is your Teams video lagging during meetings? This can be caused by overtaxed computer or network resources. To help mitigate this issue, try the following:

• Turn your video off
• Close applications and browser tabs you aren’t using
• Restart Teams
• Restart your computer
• Update Teams

Inability to make outbound calls or start audio conferences

Are you normally able to make outbound Teams Phone calls or use audio conferencing, and now the option won’t work? This may be due to your communication credit pool being depleted. You’ll want to reach out to your IT administrator to replenish it. You may also want to consider turning on auto-charge so you don’t get taken by surprise when it runs out again.

Conclusion

Microsoft Teams is a powerful business tool, full of functionality that goes far beyond a chat and video calling system. However, issues can slow down your productivity and can be frustrating if they are reoccurring. These tips will help improve your overall Teams experience, so feel free to share!

Are you looking to improve your organization’s use of Microsoft Teams? Get in touch below to find out how Regroove can help!