Brass Contributor

Sep 09, 2020

Limits and specifications for teams:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/limits-specifications-teams

Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams

08/25/2020
11 minutes to read
- +33
Applies to: Microsoft Teams

This article describes some of the limits, specifications, and other requirements that apply to Teams.

Teams and channels

TEAMS AND CHANNELSFeature Maximum limit

Number of teams a user can create	Subject to a 250 object limit¹
Number of teams a user can be a member of	1,000
Number of members in a team	10,000
Number of owners per team	100
Number of org-wide teams allowed in a tenant	5
Number of members in an https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/create-an-org-wide-team	5,000
Number of teams a global admin can create	500,000
Number of teams a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization can have	500,000²
Number of channels per team	200 (includes deleted channels)³
Number of Private channels per team	30
Number of members in a Private channel	250
Maximum number of members in an Office 365 group that can be converted to a team	10,000
Channel conversation post size	Approximately 28 KB per post4

1 Any directory object in Azure Active Directory counts towards this limit. Global admins are exempt from this limit, as are apps calling Microsoft Graph using https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/permissions-reference.

2 This limit includes archived teams.

3 Deleted channels can be restored within 30 days. During these 30 days, a deleted channel continues to be counted towards the 200 channel per team limit. After 30 days, a deleted channel and its content are permanently deleted and the channel no longer counts towards the 200 channels per team limit.

4 28 KB is an approximate limit because it includes the message itself (text, image links, etc.), @-mentions, number of connectors, and reactions.

Messaging

Chat

Users who participate in conversations that are part of the chat list in Teams must have an Exchange Online (cloud-based) mailbox for an admin to search chat conversations. That's because conversations that are part of the chat list are stored in the cloud-based mailboxes of the chat participants. If a chat participant doesn't have an Exchange Online mailbox, the admin won't be able to search or place a hold on chat conversations. For example, in an Exchange hybrid deployment, users with on-premises mailboxes might be able to participate in conversations that are part of the chat list in Teams. However, in this case, content from these conversations isn't searchable and can't be placed on hold because the users don't have cloud-based mailboxes. (For more, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/exchange-teams-interact.)

Teams chat works on a Microsoft Exchange backend, so Exchange messaging limits apply to the chat function within Teams.

CHATFeature Maximum limit

Number of people in a private chat1	250
Number of people in a video or audio call from chat	20
Number of file attachments2	10
Chat size	Approximately 28 KB per post3

1 If you have more than 20 people in a chat, the following chat features are turned off: Outlook automatic replies and Teams status messages; typing indicator; video and audio calling; sharing; read receipts. The "Set Delivery Options" button (!) is also removed when private group chats contain more than 20 members.

2 If the number of attachments exceeds this limit, you'll see an error message.

3 28 KB is an approximate limit because it includes the message itself (text, image links, etc.), @-mentions, and reactions.

Emailing a channel

If users want to send an email to a channel in Teams, they use the channel email address. When an email is part of a channel, anyone can reply to it to start a conversation. Here are some of the applicable limits for sending email to a channel.

EMAILING A CHANNELFeature Maximum limit

Message size1	24 KB
Number of file attachments2	20
Size of each file attachment	Less than 10 MB
Number of inline images2	50

1 If the message exceeds this limit, a preview message is generated and the user is asked to download and view the original email from the link provided.

2 If the number of attachments or images exceeds this limit, you'll see an error message.

For more information, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-limits.

Note

Message size, file attachments, and inline images limits are the same across all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses.

Channel names

Channel names can't contain the following characters or words.

CHANNEL NAMES

Characters	~ # % & * { } + / \ : < > ? \| ' " , .
Characters in these ranges	0 to 1F 80 to 9F
Words	forms, CON, CONIN$, CONOUT$, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1 to LPT9, desktop.ini, _vti_

Channel names also can't start with an underscore (_) or period (.), or end with a period (.).

Meetings and calls

Important

In April, we announced that temporary default limit increases would be enabled for Microsoft 365 live events to help better support customers, through July 1st. To continue meeting the needs of customers, we will extend the temporary default limits until October 1, 2020. Live events hosted in Teams, Stream, and Yammer will continue to temporarily support events for up to 20,000 attendees, 16 hours in length, and 50 events happening simultaneously. Additionally, customers can host a live event in Stream for up to 100,000 attendees when planned though the https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/live-events/assistance/.

MEETINGS AND CALLSFeature Maximum limit

Number of people in a meeting (can chat and call in)	300
Number of people in a video or audio call from chat	20
Max PowerPoint File Size	2GB
Teams keeps https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/cloud-recording that don't get uploaded to Microsoft Stream, available for local download	20 days

Meeting expiration

MEETING EXPIRATIONMeeting type Meeting expires after this much time Each time you start or update a meeting, expiration extends by this much time

Meet now	Start time + 8 hours	N/A
Regular with no end time	Start time + 60 days	60 days
Regular with end time	End time + 60 days	60 days
Recurring with no end time	Start time + 60 days	60 days
Recurring with end time	End time of last occurrence + 60 days	60 days

Note

Microsoft Teams meetings have a time limit of 24 hours.

Teams live events

TEAMS LIVE EVENTSFeature Maximum limit

Audience size	10,000 attendees
Duration of event	4 hours
Concurrent live events running in a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization 1	15

1 You can schedule as many live events as you want, but you can only run 15 at a time. As soon as the producer joins a live event, it's considered to be running. The producer who attempts to join the 16th live event gets an error.

For more information about live events and a comparison of Teams live events to Skype Meeting Broadcast, go to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-live-events/plan-for-teams-live-events#teams-live-events-and-skype-meeting-broadcast.

Important

Microsoft 365 live event limit increases

To help customers meet rapidly changing communication needs, Microsoft 365 live events will temporarily raise default limits until October 1, 2020, for live events hosted in Teams. The following increases are being rolled out:

Attendee limit: events can support up to 20,000 attendees
Concurrent events: 50 events can be hosted simultaneously across a tenant
Event duration: event length has been increased to 16 hours per broadcast

Presence in Outlook

Teams presence in Outlook is supported on the Outlook 2013 desktop app and later. To learn more about presence in Teams, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/presence-admins.

Storage

Each team in Microsoft Teams has a team site in SharePoint Online, and each channel in a team gets a folder within the default team site document library. Files shared within a conversation are automatically added to the document library, and permissions and file security options set in SharePoint are automatically reflected within Teams.

Note

Each https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/private-channels has its own SharePoint site collection.

If you don't have SharePoint Online enabled in your tenant, Microsoft Teams users cannot always share files in teams. Users in private chat also cannot share files because OneDrive for Business (which is tied to the SharePoint license) is required for that functionality.

By storing the files in the SharePoint Online document library and OneDrive for Business, all compliance rules configured at the tenant level will be followed. (For more, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/sharepoint-onedrive-interact.)

Because Teams runs on a SharePoint Online backend for file sharing, SharePoint limitations apply to the Files section within a Team. Here are the applicable storage limits for SharePoint Online.

TABLE 8Feature Microsoft 365 Business Basic Microsoft 365 Business Standard Office 365 Enterprise E1 Office 365 Enterprise E3 Office 365 Enterprise E5 Office 365 Enterprise F1

Storage	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization
Storage for Teams Files	Up to 25 TB per site collection or group	Up to 25 TB per site collection or group	Up to 25 TB per site collection or group	Up to 25 TB per site collection or group	Up to 25 TB per site collection or group	Up to 25 TB per site collection or group
File upload limit (per file)	100 GB	100 GB	100 GB	100 GB	100 GB	100 GB

Channels are backed by folders within the SharePoint Online site collection created for the team, so file tabs within Channels share the storage limits of the team they belong to.

For more information, see https://support.office.com/article/SharePoint-Online-limits-8f34ff47-b749-408b-abc0-b605e1f6d498.

Class teams

Microsoft Teams for Education provides templates designed for unique education scenarios, such as classroom teaching. More information about team types, including class teams, is available in https://support.microsoft.com/office/choose-a-team-type-to-collaborate-in-microsoft-teams-0a971053-d640-4555-9fd7-f785c2b99e67.

A class team is a template type with additional apps included, and with limits separate to the number of team members.

Note

Using class teams requires an https://www.microsoft.com/education/products/office.

Limits for class teams are listed in the following table:

CLASS TEAMSFeature Maximum limit

Number of members in a team	See the https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/limits-specifications-teams#teams-and-channels section of this article
Number of members to use Assignments in a class team	200
Number of members to use a OneNote Class Notebook in a class team	200

A class team can support more than 200 members. However, if you plan to use either the Assignments app or Class Notebook app within your team, you will need to keep the number of members below the maximum limits above.

Contacts

Teams uses these contacts:

Contacts in your organization's Active Directory
Contacts added to the user's Outlook default folder

Teams users can communicate with anyone in your organization's Active Directory and can add anyone in your organization's Active Directory as a contact and to their contact lists by going to Chat > Contacts or Calls > Contacts.

Teams users can also add a person who isn't in your organization's Active Directory as a contact by going to Calls > Contacts.

Browsers

Teams fully supports the following Internet browsers, with noted exceptions for calling and meetings. This table applies to operating systems running on desktop computers.

BROWSERSBrowser Calling - audio, video, and sharing Meetings - audio, video, and sharing1 2 3

Internet Explorer 11	Not supported	Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on IE11 without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) Microsoft 365 apps and services will not support Internet Explorer 11 starting August 17, 2021 (Microsoft Teams will not support Internet Explorer 11 earlier, starting November 30, 2020). https://www.microsoft.com/edge/business. Please note that Internet Explorer 11 will remain a supported browser. Internet Explorer 11 is a component of the Windows operating system and https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/internet-explorer-microsoft-edge for the product on which it is installed.
Microsoft Edge, RS2 or later	Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing4	Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing
Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), the latest version plus two previous versions	Fully supported	Fully supported
Google Chrome, the latest version plus two previous versions	Fully supported	Fully supported Sharing is supported without any plug-ins or extensions on Chrome version 72 or later.
Safari 13+	1:1 calls not supported. Group calls supported with full audio support. Video: Incoming only Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing)	Meetings are supported with full audio support. Video: Incoming only Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing)
Firefox, the latest version plus two previous versions	Not supported	Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Firefox without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing)
Safari versions before 13	Not supported	Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Safari without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) Safari is enabled on versions higher than 11.1 in preview. While in preview, there are https://support.office.com/article/safari-browser-support-1aac0a7c-35a8-42c1-a7df-f674afe234df with Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention.

1 To https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/meeting-policies-in-teams#allow-a-participant-to-give-or-request-control, both parties must be using the Teams desktop client. Control isn't supported when either party is running Teams in a browser. This is due to a technical limitation that we're planning to fix.

2 Blur my background isn't available when you run Teams in a browser. This feature is only available in the Teams desktop client.

3 Teams meetings on browsers are limited to a single incoming video feed of active speaker.

4 Edge RS2 or later doesn't support sending real-time audio and video traffic through HTTP proxies.

Note

As long as an operating system can run the supported browser, Teams is supported on desktop computers. For example, running Firefox on the Linux operating system is an option for using Teams.

For mobile operating systems, we recommend that you run the Teams app, available from the Android and iOS stores. Running Teams in a mobile operating system is supported, but many features are unavailable.