MC695487 - Contact Unification across Outlook and Teams

Updated September 10, 2025:May 23, 2024: We are working on a few changes to the system, and the current Message center post will be updated soon to reflect the latest plan and timelines. In the interim, we have updatedcompleted one time migration of Teams, contacts to outlook contact store but any changes in Outlook will not reflect in Teams and vice versa. This will be enabled in next steps for this effort. Please stay tuned for further updates on this via the content. Thank you for your patience. message center post.

 Today, users can see Outlook contacts created with their Entra ID (AAD) account in Teams, but contacts created in Teams are not available in Outlook. To provide a consistent experience we are making changes to allow Teams contacts, created with a user's Entra ID (AAD) account, to be visible in Outlook as well.

Upcoming changes to contacts in Teams and Outlook:

Currently, Teams and Outlook maintain separate contact lists for enterprise users. Based on your feedback, we plan to introduce a unified contact experience, ensuring a consistent contacts experience across Outlook and Teams. In future, changes to contacts in users’ organization (Entra ID) account in Teams will reflect in Outlook and vice versa. 

What's Happened so far: 

• We have completed one round of migration of all Teams contacts to Outlook in January 2024. 
• As a result, users may see more contacts in Outlook, namely those created in Teams and potentially Skype for Business contacts (if enabled). 
• Existing Outlook contacts may also be enriched with additional details from corresponding Teams contacts. 
• Teams users can see Outlook contacts but cannot edit them inside Teams. 

What's Coming: 

Users will gradually upgrade to the new unified experience from December 2024. The new experience will be enabled for each user across all endpoints (Desktop, Mobile, Devices etc.) simultaneously. Once the new experience is enabled for a user, they will see same set of contacts in Outlook and Teams. Any change in Outlook will reflect in Teams and vice versa. 

All Teams contact changes (creations and edits) made since January will be included in the unified store. During creations, a small set of users may see duplicate contacts in the unified store. To help users navigate the transition, category label ‘Teams Conflict’ will be applied to duplicate contacts. This label will help users see any conflicts (duplicates or inconsistencies) that need their attention. 

When this will happen:

This activity is expectedWe will provide updates when we are ready to be completed for all active users by September 2025 (previously August) tentatively (previously June). Once this activity is complete, users will work with a single contact list across Teams and Outlook. proceed.

How this will affect your organization

Once this change is complete, users will be able to see created contacts across both Outlook and Teams and vice versa.

What you need to do to prepare

Action Required: Update your organisation documentation and training materials to reflect the upcoming changes for the new unified contact experience.

You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate. If users wish to retain a snapshot of their existing contacts in Outlook, please encourage users to back-up their existing contacts using the export capability in Outlook.