How do you create Contact Groups in the New Teams

This is absolutely ridiculous. The new Teams is a downgrade from the old one. It does not offer anything at all new and you cannot have your favorites. Whoever designed this is an absolute idiot. I can't believe this was designed not to have favorite contacts at all. Microsoft should have a fix and should not be very difficult to do so. And why would you take your favorite contacts anyway. What is the rationale behind that move.

well .. inspired by the label of ridiculous and absolute idiot .. i decided dive in

the point if i understood earlier posts was under the old teams you could add a "contact group" and then manages contacts within that group .. add and remove as needed. Under the new teams these appear as "categories"

start new teams

goto the 3 dots on left panel and start people and pin

you should see a list on left panel of all your old contact groups along with other mishmash of "enhancements"

then at top left click on "all contacts". in the top search type the starter of the name of a contact you want to add to a group

lets say it presents a list of contacts that match they typed search, and the contact you want to add to one of the old contact groups .. that are not "categories" .. on the row of the contact .. if you hover and highlight a row, there is 3 dots click on that, select "add category" scroll thru the list until you see the contact group you want to add this contact to .. select

Now on the left panel select the old contact group name and see if the contact you added is in there.

Hope that works for you.

Thank you for this information. As usual, Microsoft takes a step backward for every step forward they make. Countless times with various Microsoft products they take something away when adding new functionality. You would think by now that people shouldn't have to groan (or search for alternate options) when a new version of their software comes out. I have heard colleagues that work on SharePoint repeatedly complain that they used to be able to do something that is no longer supported (or that requires specific coding expertise. Maybe someday they will learn how to release software that is truly an upgrade rather than a combination of degradation and upgrade.

Yes, I noticed this also. You can't even add people to favorite contacts from what I can gather. Also, once you sign out of Teams then back in, the People app disappears and you have to go back and pin it again. This is a total and complete downgrade. It was even better in Skype. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

Hi Ian, My name is Umar and I'd be happy to help you out with your question.

Please note: This is a user-to-user community forum. We are users just like you who help others. We are not employees of Microsoft.

You're correct that the current functionality for creating contact groups in Teams doesn't directly translate to the New Teams experience. While the old Teams method involved the Chat dropdown and "Contacts," that specific interface element isn't present in the New Teams design. The new Teams client has replaced the contact list with the People app, which allows users to add new contacts, designate contacts as favorites, and add categories to contacts. However, the ability to create contact groups similar to the classic Teams client is not yet supported in the new version.

Please note that switching to the previous version of Teams may limit access to some of the newer features and improvements introduced in the New Teams interface. It's recommended to periodically check for updates to the New Teams interface to see if contact group functionality has been added.

I hope this information is helpful. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

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Best Regards, Umar Majeed