How to delete Microsoft Teams account
A Microsoft Teams account, once created, isn’t easy to remove. This problem exists because of two reasons; the account is normally tied to an email that is linked to a Microsoft 365 account, or it’s an Active Directory account and it has to be deleted from a domain’s SharePoint website to effectively remove the user.
In general, deleting a Microsoft Teams account will often require that a user remove a license for the product as well as remove themselves from any domain they’re attached to. Deleting a free Microsoft Teams account will often prove more complicated than deleting a business or enterprise account.
Delete Microsoft Teams account
To delete a Microsoft Teams account, you should first determine everything that is linked to it. More often than not, you will use this same account with lots of other Microsoft services and when you delete the account, you may very well lose access to the services as well as the data stored in them.
Delete Microsoft Teams account – Free
Deleting a Microsoft Teams free account often carries a lot of collateral with it if it’s linked to a Microsoft 365 account. If your account is not linked to any other Microsoft service, you won’t lose as much data. To delete the account, you must delete the Microsoft Account that you use to sign in to Microsoft Teams.
- Visit the Close your account page.
- Sign in with the Microsoft Account you want to delete.
- Confirm that you understand each item that will be lost when you delete the account.
- Select a reason for deleting it.
- Click the delete button.
- The account will be marked for deletion.
Note: the account can be recovered within 60 days but not after. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription associated with the account, cancel it, check if you can get a refund, and then proceed.
Delete Microsoft Teams account – Organization/Enterprise
To delete a Microsoft Teams account, you must have admin rights to the Microsoft 365 admin center,
- Visit the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- In the column on the left, expand Users.
- Select Active Users.
- Select the user you want to delete.
- Click Delete user.
This will delete the user from Microsoft Teams but their email is still active and can be used to access other services that available to the account. You should delete it from the Active Directory as well.
Conclusion
A Microsoft Teams account cannot be separated from the Microsoft Account that it is linked to. You can always purchase a Microsoft 365 account from a different account than the one linked to your Microsoft Teams account but deleting it will often result in lots of collateral damage.
