I am the meeting organizer, but Teams will not allow me to access Meeting Options

Copper Contributor


Hello,

I am a teacher and I schedule my lessons on Teams. Today, I encountered a new issue. First, let me clarify that I am logged in with the same account on the app and the browser and I have gone through cleaning my browser history several times.  So, here is the problem:  I scheduled three new meetings.  I am the organizer of  all three meetings (same account). I was able to change the Meeting Options of the first meeting, but when I clicked on Meeting Options for the other two and I got a message that reads: Only meeting organizers can make changes
Your account, xxxx, doesn't have permissions to make changes.

 

I tried accessing the meetings through Teams (app and browser) and through Outlook, but I get the same message.  All help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

37 Replies
Hi,

That is a new feature. When I had this issue, you could not access meeting options from the meeting. So I have no way of knowing if it would have worked. :)
We are also facing the same issue. tried clearing cache and everything but the problem didn't solved.
Hi Katie,
No it didn't work for me. I spent some time with MS support trying to resolve this, tried all the mentioned workarounds but the conclusion was that I should simply reschedule the meetings.
We have the same issue. Doesn't allow you to open meeting options, even through you are the organizer, it says no permissions. Wish Microsoft would fix this soon.
Same thing for me. Organising in Outlook won't let me join from either Teams or Outlook or even access Meeting Options (because I am not the organizer).

I think it's something to do with caching somewhere - I've IDs in a number of tenancies - but have tried clearing browser caches and Windows credentials without success.
The only problem with that solution is that if you need to hide the participants you can't do that when you set up the meeting in Teams (at least I haven't found a way). As far as I know you can only do that from the online Outlook calendar). That said, if you open the meeting from within the calendar, Voila!
The above mentioned suggestion worked for me. I have multiple MS organisational accounts.
I first logged out of Teams desktop.
I use Edge browser so the above mentioned steps were similar.
Cleared Cache by searching for all Microsoft cookies. Deleted all.
Then signed into MS Teams desktop.
Worked :thumbs_up:

@YesimNuman Just adding another voice as I'm also experiencing this issue, and having read through this thread there doesn't appear to be a 'solution'. I mainly use Outlook to schedule Teams meetings, but when I select the Teams "Meeting options" I get the same error message that you and others have mentioned. Logging out of Teams and clearing my cache did not resolve the issue. 

@YesimNuman 

 

I want to take the time to document all this nicely, but I never find the time.  So here is a brief, I cannot be sure if it is the same issue as yours, nor have I time to carefully verify all this, but I thought I’d share it anyway in case it is helpful.  Please let me know!

 

If my assumptions are correct, I believe that this issue arises because of a bug in the "Teams Meeting add-in for Microsoft Outlook".

 

How it happens

It occurs when you schedule a meeting using the Outlook desktop calendar, and in Outlook desktop you have more than one Microsoft 365 Organization account (Exchange Online “EO” account).  You also have the Teams desktop app installed, and signed into your primary account.  You have a default EO account, but you create a Teams calendar meeting in a secondary account (or any other than your default). 

 

Symptoms

When you create a meeting in this way, you create what I “technically” call a “dud meeting”.  With a dud meeting:

  • If you try to join it at any time you will get the message “When the meeting starts, we’ll let people know you’re waiting.” – even though you may be the meeting host.
  • If you try to change the dud meeting “meeting options” you will get the message “Only meeting organisers can make changes” – even though you may be the meeting organiser.  It will even state there the correct username.

Workaround

The workaround is, to avoid the use of the “Teams Meeting add-in for Microsoft Outlook”.  A simple way to do this is to only create Teams meetings using the calendar within Teams itself (when logged in to the relevant account), using Teams web app, or perhaps the desktop app.

 

Why it happens (maybe)

I believe this issue occurs due to account-specific data that is transacted and compiled between the Teams desktop app and the “Teams Meeting add-in for Microsoft Outlook” at the point it attempts to schedule the meeting.  Somewhere there is an assumption that connects the identity information to your default Outlook org / EO account.  Even if you have a secondary EO calendar set up in Outlook desktop and you create the Teams meeting in that Outlook desktop calendar, the Teams meeting that is created in that secondary EO calendar has some kind of identity meta data that is from your primary account, not the secondary account.  Thus “primary account” is the “organiser” (regardless of what it says).  That account does not belong in this secondary organisation, so it is invalid.  You can’t join that meeting, or administrate it.

@Steven Munden 

You are absolutely correct about the phenomenon. This is exactly what happens to me. And I suspect your assumption about the bug in the Teams Add-On for Outlook is also correct.

A year and a half later and Microsoft hasn't fixed it. I still have the same problem.

Having been experiencing this issue with a client where some people work within multiple 365 environments, there does appear to be some correlation between meetings where Organiser rights are lost after being created via the Outlook Calendar, obviously via the Teams add-in. We've done significant diagnostics and testing after clearing the Teams cache (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/troubleshoot/teams-administration/clear-teams-cache) for 'multiple 365 org' users, which hasn't resolved it, and I am tending towards your conclusion re the Teams Outlook add-in. I can say that people who create meetings in Outlook definitely appear to have more issues with lost Organiser rights than those only using Teams, but at this stage I don't have the data to confirm that Teams-created meetings always work, and it's certainly true that some Outlook-created meetings are fine, so there does seem to be some path through the Outlook Teams add-in which causes the problem. It would be nice to feel that Microsoft were investing as much time and energy in trying to understand this issue as many in this conversation, especially as they are the ones with the power to resolve it! It's astonishing that this thread has a reason to remain live after over 2 years...

@JimbotronInteresting to see your experience reinforcing that of @StevenMunden !

I think the fact that the Teams client doesn't allow more than one enterprise O365 account is an indicator of the root of the problem.

Microsoft assumed people will only ever use Teams with one and only one enterprise O365 account. So, the Outlook add-on just assigns the meeting organizer based on the account you've used to log in to the Teams client, rather than the account/calendar where you create the meeting in Outlook. The weird thing is that the correct account shows up as the organizer when you view the meeting in the Teams client, but it tells you you're not the organizer if you try to change settings, and it won't let you start the call. This has led to many frustrating experiences for my customers, and is not a good look.

In the end, I uninstalled the Teams client. I use teams only from within Edge. And I create calendar meetings only from within Teams within Edge. Until they fix this bug, it's the safest way to avoid having a meeting with all of your clients waiting and you can't start it.

Agreed, Microsoft's bizarre assumption that people will only use Teams within a single 365 tenant was a huge failure at the design stage, and has resulted in a raft of problems as well as huge inconvenience to users having to log out of and into different tenants to access them.

I've had issues with Edge InPrivate instances not fully isolating authentications to different 365 tenants, although Chrome Profiles handle this fine. Maybe I should test that in Edge again since both browsers are now so closely related. I can't recall whether I last tested this in Edge's early or pre-Chromium days!

@ChrisMooreGB 

 

I've had issues with Edge InPrivate instances not fully isolating authentications to different 365 tenants, although Chrome Profiles handle this fine

 

I would not mind betting this is to do with your computer being signed in with an org account, and Edge helpfully automatically signing you into that account, even if that's not what you want.  Similar issue really, affecting those that use multiple org accounts.  I have about twenty due to the nature of my work, it's hard work!

My org is trying to use Teams Channel Calendar to manage our Team's vacation calendar. Anyone know if there is a way to decommission the actual Teams meeting URL, so it is on the calendar as an event? We were hoping Teams Channel Calendar would replace our old SharePoint calendar.

We are also struggling with editing the meeting options - some are editable via Meeting Options, which opens a new window. However, it does not appear the "Show As" and "Category" are editable. Anyone have recommendations? Or, do we need to delete the event and create a new one to edit. Thanks.
I have been having this issue on and off for a while now, but have had to (desperately!) investigate a resolution once I was unable to access the recording of the meeting I was the organizer of.

I have two o365 accounts I switch between and but am usually signed into Teams with my secondary account (I set most meetings up from my primary account, from Outlook). I've found that recently when I attempt to join my own primary account meetings, my profile defaults to my secondary account (because of the Teams login).

Last week I had a weird situation where I was able to join and run the meeting but the recording was saved to my secondary account's OneDrive. I suspected some conflict between the accounts so added the secondary account to the meeting, made it an Organizer (I'm set up so that only organizers can view recordings), and followed links to find the recording in my secondary account's OneDrive (and was able to download it). I had to try a few different login options to be able to join the meeting as the organizer to update the meeting settings, logging in and out of Teams with my different profiles, trying to join the meeting from both calendars and was eventually able to join (tried through browser and desktop client - desktop with secondary account logged into Teams, joining the meeting through primary account worked).

Hope this helps someone - really frustrating issue.