Microsoft begins to phase out ‘classic’ Teams

Seven years after the launch of Teams, Microsoft has outlined plans to retire the initial, “classic” version of the team chat app. Support for Teams classic will end on July 1 and it will be discontinued a year later; atthat point, users will be unable to access the legacy client. 

Microsoft released the new 2.1 version of Teams last October after several months in preview, claiming the new app is twice as fast and uses around 50% less memory than its predecessor. 

The move represents the biggest change to the collaboration application since it arrived in 2017 to take on rival Slack. Since then, Teams has reached 320 million monthly users, according to recent data, having capitalized on the big uptick in video meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic. That said, it hasn’t alwaysbeen well-liked by users.

While the two Teams versions have coexisted in recent months, Microsoft recently outlined its schedule to phase out classic Teams on its admin site. With the end of support coming,  no new features will be added going forward and Microsoft will cease to help customers resolve support issues. At this stage, customers will start to receive in-app messages informing them that their version of Teams is out of date. End of support was initially planned for March 31 before being pushed back.

Users will be unable to access or use the classic Teams as of July 1, 2025. Those using classic Teams on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and macOS Sierra will see the end of availability occur earlier, on Oct. 23, 2024. 

While there are advantages with the new version of Teams, some capabilities will disappear, too.  

Earlier this week, Microsoft outlined a host of changes that users might notice once they move to the new Teams. Some involve new ways to access existing tools, as well as several smaller features that will no longer be available: the activity tab in Teams chat, and Adaptive Card-based tabs in personal app tabs, for example.

The timeframe for retiring the classic Teams app seems abrupt, according to Raúl Castañón, senior research analyst at 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, and Microsoft appears to be pressuring customers to update to the new version. 

“Some business might be slow to move to the new app because they may have planned to update at a later date, or because they might want to wait until Microsoft has worked out software bugs from the initial versions,” he said. 

Classic Teams is one of several Microsoft products heading toward end of support. Windows 10 users will no long receive security or technical support as of Oct.14, 2025, as Microsoft encourges users to migrate to Windows 11. Microsoft will also end support for Office 2016 and 2019 application suites, and related productivity servers, on the same day.