Microsoft Teams is great for team collaboration as it lets you create and join multiple teams and organizations. Often times, you want to test a few things and features before you announce it to the rest of the team or the organization for them to use. And after a while you don’t want to use the other account. Deleting would be the obvious choice, but you can Archive it so you can restore and reuse it later. In this post, we’ll show you how to archive, delete, and restore your Microsoft Teams account.
This will allow you to access or enable it again whenever you need it. We will discuss how to do this in detail below.
Let’s start.
How to Delete Microsoft 365 Teams Free Org
There are two types of Teams accounts. One is the 365 Teams free org, which we will discuss now, and the other is the regular free Teams account, which we will discuss later below.
We’ll start with the team members and remove them first and then take them from there.
How to Remove Members from Teams Account
Stage 1: Click your profile picture on the right and select Manage organization.
Step 2: Under the Members tab you will see a list of all member sections of the organization. Click the x icon on the right to remove them from the team.
How to Find the Administrator’s Email Address?
We need this for verification when deleting the account.
Your administrator email address is part of your Azure account. Go to Groups > Groups I Own and your admin email id should be on the right.
How to Reset Password
You must reset the password before you can proceed. Visit the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
Stage 1: You will be prompted to enter your account password, but instead select the Forgot password link to initiate the reset process.
Step 2: Enter the administrator email ID you found in the previous step. You should have received a verification code in the email. Use this to reset the password.
Delete Directory in Azure
Stage 1: Open the Azure portal and click the menu icon to select Azure Active Directory.
Step 2: Click the Delete directory button at the top, but there are a few validation checks you need to complete to complete the deletion.
Stage 3: Follow the links in the Action Required column and pass all checks. You can skip the subscriptions check.
Step 4: You need to cancel the last subscription. Follow the steps to cancel first and then delete the index. The process will take up to 72 hours. Return to Azure portal > Azure Active Directory and select Delete Directory.
Verify that all checkmarks are displayed in green. Click the Delete button at the bottom of the screen.
How to Delete Microsoft Teams Account
The steps to delete the regular Teams account are much simpler.
Stage 1: Open Teams account and sign in using your login information. Click the Teams button on the left and select Settings below.
Step 2: Click on the three-dot menu icon next to the name of the team you want to delete and select Delete team.
You will have a maximum of 30 days to restore the team.
How to Archive and Restore a Microsoft Teams Account
Deleting a Microsoft Teams account is more permanent in nature. Maybe you can archive it instead? That way, there’s always the option to restore it later when you need it. We will also discuss how to do this.
Open Microsoft Teams, click the gear icon to open Settings, select the three-dot menu icon next to the team name and select Archive.
A popup will jump and ask for confirmation. Click Archive.
Follow the same steps, but this time select Restore from the menu to restore the archived Microsoft Teams account.
Working with Teams
While the steps to delete, archive and restore a Microsoft Teams account are fairly simple, the same cannot be said for the Teams free organizational account. There are many steps involved, and there are a few steps required to prolong the process unnecessarily. But that’s the case, and I think part of it is because it’s tied to a Microsoft 365 account. Either way, now you know what to do.
Microsoft Teams is popular with Office suite users and those deeply integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem. For the rest of the world who need an app for video calling and conferencing, this is too much. Zoom or Google Meet is a much better option. They do not offer project management features like Teams. Therefore, choose wisely according to your needs.
Next: Looking for a new project management tool? We have listed and compared the top 5 in the link below. Check them out when you’re done with Teams.
