Outlook contacts not syncing with Teams, why?

[Kai Stenberg]

Hi, according to this : https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/o365-outlook-contacts-not-syncing-with-teams/...

You need to have a company name for every contact you want to sync to Teams. 

Why does it have to be like this. I have and lot's my customers do not understand this. In Skype for business this was so much better.

Why do I need to add a company name for eg. my parents, my friends if I want to call them. This is pointless and I think this needs to be fixed.

As from my point of view this is a major issue and a real bad feature for this kind of function.

[#2]

@Kai Stenberg Hello, if you want the contacts to show up in Teams (under Calls -> Contacts) they will when they have been assigned a phone number. Just added a contact in Outlook to verify, it didn't populate in Teams until I added a number to the contact.

Just to be clear. I did only add the name, email and phone in the above scenario. A manual sign out / sign with the Teams client quickened the contact appearing in Teams.

[#3]

@bec064 but if I have already lot's of contacts in outlook, who does not appear until I add a company name in outlook eg. Private or the real company name

[#4]

@Kai Stenberg That's a fair question. I suppose our environments aren't identical. The Outlook contacts you're adding a company name to already have a phone number? Do you have any contact that's missing a phone number you could test and add a number to? Or just reproduce the scenario I described earlier. It would be interesting to know the outcome.

[#5]

A contact that I have in outlook who has a phonenumber and email address but no company name does not appear in Teams under contacts in calls. If I ad in Teams under contacts it does not appear in Outlook.
If would have been nice to have they both synced. :)
So as I see it, if you have outlook contacts with phonenumber and email address, without company they don't get synced into Teams contacts :(

[#6 · Accepted solution]

@Kai Stenberg Please try adding a contact in Outlook with just a name and a phone number. Sign out of Teams desktop manually (top right corner) and back in again. Does it appear under Calls -> Contacts in Teams?

[#7]

Hi @bec064, this was interesting. Added a new contact without email address just company name and phonenumber on E164 standard. Did a restart and it was added.

But old contacs does not show up for some reason if I don't add a company name. Real strange.

[#8]

Hi again @bec064 I think I have a conclusion. 

Just add a new contact or update an old one and restart Teams and it will show up.

Thanks for pushing me testing different way to figure this out. 

Problem solved for now I think. Have a great day and stay safe.

[#9]

@Kai Stenberg I had a feeling that was the issue. Good to hear and glad to help!

[#10]

@Kai Stenberg Should new outlook contacts continue to sync after I sign out once or am I going to have to sign out and in everytime I add a contact? We are also experiencing a lot of issues where signing out and in does not resolve the sync issue. 

[#11]

Hi again, new issues regarding to contacts. 

When under calls--> Contacts and searching, it seems to just find the one you have in your list. But if you choose to add a new then it search the whole global address list from what I see.

Why not just do that from "find" functions and why does it still not import the whole list from you local GAL? This is still strange.

[#12]

Hi, you do not have to sign out / sign in manually it just quickens the appearance of the contact in Teams. There are a couple of things to take into consideration though, such as environment (cloud/on-prem, coexistence/upgrade mode in Teams) as the behavior will differ. Access Outlook contacts is not supported with mailboxes on premise, for example (see table).

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/exchange-teams-interact

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/upgrade-to-teams-on-prem-coexistence#contacts

I am aware of several UserVoice requests for an enhanced way to manage and sync Outlook contacts with Teams.