How to whitelist Teams in Windows Firewall?

Question

I have set Windows Firewall to block any inbound and outbound connections if it does not match a rule that I have specified. I have successfully allowed all applications that I want to have internet access, except Teams.

I added rules for the following executable files to Windows Firewall. Firewall rules: Inbound & outbound, allow any condition.

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Teams\Update.exe
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Teams\previous\Teams.exe
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Teams\previous\Squirrel.exe
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Teams\current\Teams.exe
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Teams\current\Squirrel.exe

At first it seems like Teams can connect because I do not get the "You're offline." banner, but after a few seconds it says "We ran into a problem. Reconnecting...".

If I disable Firewall it works.

Please see attached screenshots of my Firewall rules. Using the following rules, Firefox, Telegram, qbittorrent can use the internet with no problem--but not Teams.

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

Hello, TomatoSanta! My name is John, and I am an Independent Advisor as well as a long-time Microsoft user. I am glad to help regarding your Teams issue.

I also hope you are doing great aside from your concern today.

You may createa firewall rule that blocks everything, but deactivate it:

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Teams.exe" -Program "%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Teams\current\Teams.exe" -Profile Domain,Private,Public -Description "Teams.exe" -Group "Teams" -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -Action Block -Enabled false -EdgeTraversalPolicy Block

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Teams.exe" -Program "%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Teams\current\Teams.exe" -Profile Domain,Private,Public -Description "Teams.exe" -Group "Teams" -Direction Inbound -Protocol UDP -Action Block -Enabled false -EdgeTraversalPolicy Block

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

As I said, I have already added rules for Teams.exe and more...

Answer 3

Hello TomatoSanta! My name is Abdullah, and I am an Independent Advisor as well as a long-time Microsoft user.

I'm sorry that you are experiencing this issue, and I will try my best to assist you with this so that you find a satisfactory solution.

Please let me know other than creating rules, what else have you done to troubleshoot this issue? Also, I am sharing link below, please check it, it may help you:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/quest...

Please let me know if the above article helped you. Thank you.

Best,

Abdullah

Answer 4

I already tried the previously suggested trick of creating a Firewall rule and disabling it. It did not fix the problem.

Please see attached screenshots of my Firewall rules. Firefox, Telegram, qbittorrent can use the internet with no problem, but not Teams.

Answer 5

Hi TomatoSanta,

Thank you for the confirmation. Please consider removing the rules and follow the article below to create new rules for Teams:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteam...

Thank you.