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Disabling the setting “People in my organization can chat and have meetings with external users who have unmanaged Microsoft accounts”

Seerat Fatma 70 Reputation points
2026-02-03T08:48:06.74+00:00

Hello,

We are planning to disable “People in my organization can chat and have meetings with external users who have unmanaged Microsoft accounts” setting in our organization and the following impact will be noted:

  • Users in our organization will not be able to initiate 1:1 or group chats with unmanaged Microsoft account users.
  • Users will not be able to schedule or conduct Teams meetings with unmanaged Microsoft account users. Need clarification on below 3 points: As per my understanding, after disabling this users can still add unmanaged accounts in Teams groups and channels. Please clarify this.

Also if someone wants to setup a meeting with unmanaged account it will not be possible. What could be a workaround for this?
We need to invite them as guest user first then we can setup a meetings directly, i think we can invite them as guest user from Microsoft Azure that is the only option we have ?

There will be no impact on existing guest accounts and they will work as expected.

Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams for business | Other
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  1. Tina L 12,330 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-02-03T13:15:27.09+00:00

    Hello @Seerat Fatma,  

    Thank you for reaching out to the Q&A forum! 

    For your concern, I will explain detail: 

    When the setting “People in my organization can chat and have meetings with external users who have unmanaged Microsoft accounts” is disabled, users in your organization will no longer be able to chat with or schedule Microsoft Teams meetings directly with unmanaged (consumer) Microsoft accounts such as Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, or Live.com accounts. 

    • This behavior is by design and is documented under Microsoft Teams external access for Teams accounts not managed by an organization.  
    • Once this setting is turned off, unmanaged accounts cannot participate in 1:1 chats, group chats, or Teams meetings with users in your tenant via external access.  

    For reference: Use guest access and external access to collaborate with people outside your organization - Microso…  

    Additionally, I would like to clarify something: are you saying that after disabling this setting, users are still able to add unmanaged accounts? If so, have you tested this behavior in your tenant?

    Since from a technical perspective, that situation should not be possible (if an external user has never existed in the tenant as a Guest user). When option is turned off, users will not be able to search for, resolve, or add that unmanaged account to a Team or Microsoft 365 group.

    So, there is no supported workaround within Teams to continue collaborating with unmanaged accounts through external access after this setting is disabled. 

    If collaboration is still required, the only supported option is to invite the external user as a Guest user (Microsoft Entra ID / Azure AD B2B). After the guest invitation is accepted and the user becomes a Guest in your tenant, they can chat, join and schedule Teams meetings, and be added to Teams and channels as permitted by your guest access.

    User's image

    More detail in this article:  Guest access in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn 

    Existing Guest users are not impacted by this change and will continue to work as expected.

    I hope you understand that as a forum moderator, I can only provide information based on my research and practical experience, rather than direct access to or testing within your specific tenant. I also hope the information shared above has helped clarify how this setting works and has given you better visibility into its expected behavior.

    If you receive any updates or insights, please feel free to reply here.               

    Looking forward to hearing from you! 

     If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment". 

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread. 

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