Adding new people to contacts in Microsoft 365 version of Teams

Question

Dear MS Help

I have just purchased a personal subscription to Microsoft 365 and I am trying to add new people to my list of contacts in MS Teams. Looking at some online MS forums, it mentions that under the people tab there is a add contact icon that you can use, but the view that I get is shown below, which doesn't include that option. When I have tried to sync MS Teams with my address book in MS Outlook that hasn't worked either (it says it has synced, but no additional contacts appear in Teams.

Any assistance that you can provide on how to resolve this would be greatly appreciated, as, at the moment, I can't use Teams as I can't send invites for meetings to people not in contact list.

Regards

David Sheehan

Answer 1

Teams doesn't have a contact list or address book. It uses the Chat feature to add people so you can talk, call, or arrange meetings with them.
The only why I have found to add contacts to Teams chat when using a personal Microsoft 365 license (Not work related), is to add their email address to the search bar at the very top of the Teams app:
When you type in their email address, it will then provide a name in the search results,
Click on it and it will then create a chat window and send them an invite to Teams.

Or if you want to add multiple people, click on the search bar and then click "Invite people to Teams":
It will then give you a link you can email out to your contacts so they can add Teams there side for you to contact them.
If they have Teams, it will just add you to their chat list and them to your chat list.

Teams chat, calls, and meetings, only work if the other person has access to Teams, be it via the App or Web Browser. They will need Teams there end.

Answer 2

The advice you have received from Q&A Assist AI bot refers to users with a business account. It is not applicable to Teams Personal account users.

It appears that Microsoft is changing now how contacts are managed in Teams Personal. The option to sync contacts from Outlook is currently not functional, but there is no official documentation available on whether this is a temporal or a permanent change.

The contacts listed from the People tab, appear only to apply to contacts migrated from Skype or contacts from phone address book. This feature is not useful for new Teams users.

Based on my own experience. what will work is to search for new contacts using the Search option at the top of the main Teams window.

Alternative is to make use of the "Invite people to Teams" option. This option will generate an invitation link which can be send to your friends using email, SMS or any other communication media.

These seems to be the options available now, but everything can change in the future.