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Upgrading from Teams Free to Paid

Copper Contributor

Hi - hoping someone can help with this! I need to upgrade our Teams Free to the Paid version, but according to the documentation online, only the person who set up the original subscription can do this. Is that right? I don't know who did that, and MS weren't able find out for me. I've tried with several users here that might have set it up, and who have the paid licence, but they don't see the button either.

 

I spoke to MS support and we changed a setting to stop users from setting up trials and subscriptions which they said would help but that hasn't made a difference. There are still some users that have the free licence, would that be a problem? I need to get this sorted quite urgently so if anyone can help I'd be very grateful.

4 Replies
Hi @bensummers,

The person who set up the account would be the one with the Global Admin permissions to the environment. It is these details they are looking for here

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Upgrade-from-Teams-free-to-Teams-29475bbd-a34f-4175-9b33-d4...

Or if you login to the Microsoft 365 admin centre (https://login.microsoftonline.com) and then order it through billing.

What 'may' help you to identify the people who it may be is to log into the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com and go to Active Directory. This should show you a list of the users in the account which may help you identify who the global admin is - the original person who set that up.

Hope that helps

Best, Chris

Hi @Christopher Hoard 

 

Thanks for your advice! We have a number of Global Admins but none of them are able to see the upgrade button. I've attempted the upgrade with the first global admin account that was set up for the company as well but I still can't see the option.

 

Can I just check that I'm looking in the right place? I've attached a screenshot of what I see, I'm expecting to see the option under the user account.

best response confirmed by bensummers (Copper Contributor)
Solution
Hi Ben,

Thanks for providing the screen shot.

Just to confirm - is it only Teams free you are using for the whole organisation? Or do you have some users in the tenant that use free and some that use paid licences such as Business Premium?

If it is the second option, all you should need to do is log in to https://login.microsoftonline.com as a global admin, go to billing and order a licence such as business premium and then apply that to the user who has a free licence.

AFAIK, there isn’t a way to upgrade specific users through the Teams client itself.

Hope that makes sense! Let me know how you get on!

Best, Chris
Hi Chris,

Despite not seeing an upgrade button it looks like this upgraded at some point as I can now see admin options that I know aren't available in the free version! Very strange, but at least it's sorted now. Thanks for your help!

Ben
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by bensummers (Copper Contributor)
Solution
Hi Ben,

Thanks for providing the screen shot.

Just to confirm - is it only Teams free you are using for the whole organisation? Or do you have some users in the tenant that use free and some that use paid licences such as Business Premium?

If it is the second option, all you should need to do is log in to https://login.microsoftonline.com as a global admin, go to billing and order a licence such as business premium and then apply that to the user who has a free licence.

AFAIK, there isn’t a way to upgrade specific users through the Teams client itself.

Hope that makes sense! Let me know how you get on!

Best, Chris

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