Add guests or external users to a team in Teams

Sometimes you'll want to collaborate with people who aren't in your team’s organization. If you want to collaborate with them in Teams, you can add them as a guest. Guests have fewer capabilities than team members or team owners, but there's still a lot they can do. For a deeper look, see Guest capabilities in Teams.

Note: You must be a team owner to add a guest in Teams. 

Add a guest to your team

Guests must have a Microsoft 365 work or school account. If the guest doesn’t yet have a Microsoft account associated with their email address, they will be directed to create one for free.

Note: After you add a guest to a team, it may take a few hours before they have access.

To add a guest to your team in Teams:

  1. Select Teams  Teams button and go to the team in your team list.

  2. Select More options More options button > Add member.

    Add members to a team in Teams

  3. Enter the guest's email address. Anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook, Gmail, or others, can join your team as a guest.

    Note: If you receive a "We didn't find any matches" error while trying to add a guest, your organization doesn't allow guests. 

  4. Add your guest's name. Select Edit guest information Edit guest name button and type a friendly name for them. Be sure to take the time to do this now—you’ll need the help of an IT admin to do it later.

    Edit guest information in Teams.

  5. Select Add. Guests will receive a welcome email invitation that includes some information about joining Teams and what the guest experience is like. 

Note: When you add a guest, only their name gets added to their profile card. To add or change other info (such as phone number or title), you'll need to contact your IT admin.

Identify guests on a team

To see if a team has any guests, just look below the heading where the team name shows up.

Channel header indicating a guest in the group

You can tell if someone is a guest by looking anywhere their name appears—the word “Guest” appears after it. You can also see everyone’s roles in the Members tab of a team. Go to the team name, and select More options More options button > Manage team > Members.

Set guest permissions for channels in Teams

Guests have fewer capabilities than team members, but there's still a lot they can do in channels, where the work actually gets done! Team owners can set guest permissions for channels. To set guest permissions:

  1. Select Teams Teams button on the left side of the app.

  2. Go to the team name, and select More options More options button > Manage team.

    Manage teams in Teams.

  3. Select Settings > Guest permissions. Check or uncheck the permissions you want to allow.

    Set guest permissions in Teams.

Your guests can now collaborate with team members in channels.

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