Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams

• 1/8/2020
• 7 minutes to read
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• Applies to:

  Microsoft Teams

This article describes some of the limits, specifications, and other requirements that apply to Teams.

Teams and channels

¹ Any directory object in Azure Active Directory counts towards this limit. Global admins are exempt from this limit, as are apps calling Microsoft Graph using application permissions.

² This limit includes archived teams.

³ Deleted channels can be restored within 30 days. During these 30 days, a deleted channel continues to be counted towards the 200 channel per team limit. After 30 days, a deleted channel and its content are permanently deleted and the channel no longer counts towards the 200 channels per team limit.

Messaging

Chat

Users who participate in conversations that are part of the chat list in Teams must have an Exchange Online (cloud-based) mailbox for an admin to search chat conversations. That's because conversations that are part of the chat list are stored in the cloud-based mailboxes of the chat participants. If a chat participant doesn't have an Exchange Online mailbox, the admin won't be able to search or place a hold on chat conversations. For example, in an Exchange hybrid deployment, users with on-premises mailboxes might be able to participate in conversations that are part of the chat list in Teams. However, in this case, content from these conversations isn't searchable and can't be placed on hold because the users don't have cloud-based mailboxes. (For more, see How Exchange and Microsoft Teams interact.)

Teams chat works on a Microsoft Exchange backend, so Exchange messaging limits apply to the chat function within Teams.

¹ If you have more than 20 people in a chat, the following chat features are turned off: Outlook automatic replies and Teams status messages; typing indicator; video and audio calling; sharing; read receipts.

² If the number of attachments exceeds this limit, you'll see an error message.

Emailing a channel

If users want to send an email to a channel in Teams, they use the channel email address. When an email is part of a channel, anyone can reply to it to start a conversation. Here are some of the applicable limits for sending email to a channel.

¹ If the message exceeds this limit, a preview message is generated and the user is asked to download and view the original email from the link provided.

² If the number of attachments or images exceeds this limit, you'll see an error message.

For more information, see Exchange Online limits.

Channel names

Channel names can't contain the following characters or words.

Channel names also can't start with an underscore (_) or period (.), or end with a period (.).

Meetings and calls

Meeting expiration

Teams live events

For more information about live events and a comparison of Teams live events to Skype Meeting Broadcast, go to Teams live events and Skype Meeting Broadcast.

Presence in Outlook

Teams presence in Outlook is supported on the Outlook 2013 desktop app and later. To learn more about presence in Teams, see User presence in Teams.

Storage

Each team in Microsoft Teams has a team site in SharePoint Online, and each channel in a team gets a folder within the default team site document library. Files shared within a conversation are automatically added to the document library, and permissions and file security options set in SharePoint are automatically reflected within Teams.

If you don't have SharePoint Online enabled in your tenant, Microsoft Teams users cannot always share files in teams. Users in private chat also cannot share files because OneDrive for Business (which is tied to the SharePoint license) is required for that functionality.

By storing the files in the SharePoint Online document library and OneDrive for Business, all compliance rules configured at the tenant level will be followed. (For more, see How SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business interact with Microsoft Teams.)

Because Teams runs on a SharePoint Online backend for file sharing, SharePoint limitations apply to the Files section within a Team. Here are the applicable storage limits for SharePoint Online.

Channels are backed by folders within the SharePoint Online site collection created for the team, so file tabs within Channels share the storage limits of the team they belong to.

For more information, see SharePoint Online limits.

Contacts

Teams uses these contacts:

• Contacts in your organization's Active Directory
• Contacts added to the user's Outlook default folder

Teams users can communicate with anyone in your organization's Active Directory and can add anyone in your organization's Active Directory as a contact and to their contact lists by going to Chat > Contacts or Calls > Contacts.

Teams users can also add a person who isn't in your organization's Active Directory as a contact by going to Calls > Contacts.

Browsers

Teams fully supports the following internet browsers, with noted exceptions for calling and meetings.

¹ To give and take control of shared content during sharing, both parties must be using the Teams desktop client. Control isn't supported when either party is running Teams in a browser. This is due to a technical limitation that we're planning to fix. To learn more, read Allow a participant to give or request control.

Operating systems

For information about operating system requirements, see Get clients for Microsoft Teams.