How to Add Microsoft Teams to Outlook

Make Adding Online Meetings to Your Schedule Simple

By
Aaron Peters
Aaron Peters
Aaron Peters
Writer
  • Villanova University
Aaron Peters is a writer with Lifewire who has 20+ years experience troubleshooting and writing about consumer and business technology. His work appears in Linux Journal, MakeUseOf, and others.
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Updated on August 4, 2021
Reviewed by
Ryan Perian
Ryan Perian headshot
Reviewed by Ryan Perian
  • Western Governors University
Ryan Perian is a certified IT specialist who holds numerous IT certifications and has 12+ years' experience working in the IT industry support and management positions.
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What to Know

  • The Teams Add-in for Outlook is automatically enabled when you install both applications.
  • It allows you to quickly contact your colleagues using Teams or add an online space to any meeting.
  • Just ensure the COM Add-in for Teams isn't disabled.

This article shows you how to install the Teams Add-in for Microsoft Outlook, making it easy to create online spaces for your Outlook meetings. These instructions will work for Outlook 2016 and 2019 and the current Office 365 version on Windows and macOS.

How to Install the Teams Add-in in Microsoft Outlook

Adding Teams features to Outlook uses an Add-in. However, since Teams and Outlook are both Microsoft products, all you need to do is install both programs to use them together.

Just make sure you close and restart whichever application was installed first before opening the second one to ensure that the Add-in gets picked up during launch.

How to Use the Teams Add-in for Microsoft Outlook

The Teams Add-in provides many useful functions for Outlook, as described in the following sections.

The below items require that you're a member of the same organization or team. For example, if you have your Office 365 and Teams accounts through your employer, you'll be able to see the status of your other colleagues. But you might not be able to see the status of those outside your company (nor can they see yours) unless you collaborate in Teams together.

Contact Team Status

You'll be able to see the Teams status of contacts Teams status as part of their avatars. To the lower right of the contact's picture you'll see a badge, and its color will mirror that of their status in Teams. For example, green means available, while red means currently in a meeting. You can hover your mouse over the badge to get a tooltip of the precise status in case the color alone isn't enough.

Launch Chats and Audio Calls

You may also know that hovering over the contact's picture or avatar provides a pop-up with their information, such as title or email addStarting an audio call or text chat with your contacts from the pop-up when you hover over their avatars.

Add Teams Rooms to Outlook Meetings

Finally, you can quickly add a dedicated Teams space to any meeting you create in Outlook by clicking the Teams Meeting button that appears in the Ribbon toolbar for new Meetings (as shown below).

New Outlook Meeting with Teams Option Button

It will provide your invitees with a link to join the meeting on their Teams device, as well as a dial-in number if the Microsoft account through which you receive teams subscribes to voice service.

Checking the Outlook Teams Add-in

If for some reason you're not seeing the features described in the last section, there may be an issue with your Add-in. Fortunately, checking on it is straightforward.

  1. First, click the File tab on the Ribbon toolbar to go to the Backstage area.

    The File menu highlighted in Microsoft Outlook.

  2. Next, select Options towards the bottom of the menu on the left.

    The Options option highlighted in Microsoft Outlook.

  3. Now select Add-ins from the left side of the dialog.

    The add-ins options highlighted in Microsoft Outlook.

  4. You'll see the screen shown below. Make sure the Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in is not listed in the Disabled Application Add-ins section of the list.

    The Outlook Options Add-in Dialog with an item highlighted.

  5. If it is, select Disabled Add-ins from the Manage dropdown and click Go.

    The Outlook Options Add-in Dialog with the Manage menu highlighted.

  6. Find Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in in the list that appears, select it, click Enable, then click Close.

    Once reactivated, you should get all the great Teams features the next time you re-start Outlook.

    The Disable Items option in Microsoft Outlook.
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