remove Teams (personal) chat from Windows 11

Question

We are deploying Window11 via MDT and I need to remove the CHAT, Teams Free, from the image. I have tried many things from the internet and so far nothing will remove it. I have used the PinPlacement replace to make a new task bar but Chat, Widgets and Screen seem to be ones you can't remove.

How do I permanently remove CHAT from the image before I install Office, or is there a way with O365 setup to remove it?

Answer 1

Try to manually delete the Teams-Machine Wide installer file in the path: C:\Windows\Installer.

kindly go through the following Microsoft reference article:

Clean up and redeployment procedure

Answer 2

Hi @Mark Ware

You need to uninstall two items for all users on a machine to fully uninstall Teams, so make sure you follow all the steps.

1.Quit Teams by right-clicking the Teams icon in the taskbar and choosing Close window.

2.In Windows, click on the Start button 

, > Settings > Apps.

3.Under Apps & features, search "teams".

4.Highlight Microsoft Teams, then select Uninstall.

5.A box will appear, then again select Uninstall to confirm. A new box will appear, asking Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device? Select Yes.

6.Now select Teams Machine-Wide Installer, click Uninstall. Then follow the same process described in step 5

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Answer 3

Hello

There are several ways to remove the chat icon from the Windows 11 taskbar. One way is to right-click on the Windows taskbar and select Taskbar Settings. Next, simply turn off the Chat option to disable it and free up space on the taskbar. Another way is to open Settings, navigate to Personalization, select Taskbar from the list of options, and toggle the Chat option to off.

However, it looks like you want to completely remove the chat functionality from your Windows 11 image before deploying via MDT. Unfortunately, I can't find any information on how to do this specifically.

As for removing Teams during Office 365 installation, you can use the Office Customization Tool (OCT) at config.office.com to exclude certain applications from the initial installation. You can also directly leverage the <ExcludeApp ID="APPNAME" /> attribute in the ODT configuration file. For example, to exclude Teams from installation, you can use <ExcludeApp ID="Teams" />.

Answer 4

Hi @Mark Ware

Great to know that the issue has already been resolved and thanks for sharing the solution so that others experiencing the same thing can easily reference this! Since the Microsoft Q&A community has a policy that The question author cannot accept their own answer. They can only accept answers by others, I'll repost your solution in case you'd like to Accept the answer:

case title: remove Teams (personal) chat from Windows 11

Issue Symptom: How do I permanently remove CHAT from the image before I install Office, or is there a way with O365 setup to remove it?

Resolution: https://techguided.com/how-to-remove-the-chat-button-from-the-windows-11-taskbar/#:%7E:text=Removing%20the%20Chat%20Button%20Through%20the%20Registry%20Editor&text=To%20start%2C%20open%20up%20a,type%20regedit%2C%20and%20press%20Enter.&text=Find%20the%20TaskbarMn%20key%20on,to%20disable%20the%20chat%20button.

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