[Solved] Microsoft Teams Guests Can’t Chat 2024 Guide

Microsoft teams have played a pivotal role in connecting people online and making communication a lot more accessible. With all sorts of cool features, Teams is an ideal platform to hold meetings, share ideas, and chat.

Using the Team’s application, users can join your channel through a link as guests. This way, your audience can consist of non-Teams members too. However, many users have reported a problem faced by those who join as guests.

The reports claim that multiple users who join as guests are unable to chat. The entire typing box is missing, and there’s no way for them to interact and share their thoughts.

Although the guest experience puts many limitations on users to save the host’s data, chatting is normally available to them. I myself went through a situation of the same type when I joined a Teams meeting as a guest. It felt so frustrating not being able to have a say in all of it.

So, I started digging into it to see if I could fix it. After trying a couple of tricks, I was able to resolve the problem, and I could now chat as a guest.

The solution is very simple, and you’ll have it conquered in no time. So, if you want to fix the guests can’t chat problem on Microsoft Teams, stick with me till the end, and I’ll show you how. Without further to do, let’s head right into it.

Contents

Reasons For Guests Can’t Chat on Microsoft Teams.

The guest has no conversation option if they are not a member of your Team and have merely been invited to a meeting. Additionally, a visitor cannot talk in your Microsoft Teams if the option to Allow chat in meetings is off and the number of attendees exceeds the maximum numbers.

For the following reasons, visitors are unable to communicate on Teams:

Only Added in Meetings; Not on Teams

The chat feature is disabled to protect your privacy if your visitor is added to a Team meeting but not to your Team account.

Allow Chat May to be Disabled in Meetings Option

Sometimes the host’s choice to disable Allow chat in meeting options prevents attendees from conversing during the meeting.

Maximum Attendees Limit Exceeded

The maximum number of participants in a Team meeting is 1000. You will lose the ability to talk as a guest if you go over the allotted amount.

May have Joined Meeting Via Forwarded Links.

The guest chat option won’t work if you join a meeting using a forwarded link that wasn’t included in the original links.

Fix Guests Can’t Chat on Microsoft Teams

The fact that guests on Microsoft Teams cannot talk during a meeting is a frustrating issue. This issue will disrupt communication flow. Continue reading so you can easily solve this issue in a few simple actions.

Here are several solutions to the Teams issue of guests being unable to chat:

Ensure Guests Are Added to Your Microsoft Teams

You can join a Team meeting in guest mode, but none of the features are available due to security reasons. So, make sure they are added to your Microsoft Team account if you want your visitor to be able to communicate throughout the meeting.

They won’t appear in the chat option if you don’t add them to your account. Only the people on your Team account will be allowed to chat when the meeting is set up with a channel; the visitor will not. You must include them in your Team in order to allow the guest to chat.

But keep in mind that giving the guest access to your account will let them to view all of your channels. The visitor must first attend a meeting before switching to your tenant if they wish to communicate.

Permit Allow Chat Inside Meetings Option

If you activate the Allow chat in meetings option, your Microsoft Teams issue with guests being unable to view chat will be fixed. Expand the Meetings area in the Microsoft Team admin center and enable the chat feature.

Follow the steps below to enable the Allow chat in meetings option:

Launch the Microsoft Teams Admin center.
Go ahead and expand the meetings section.
Check the box next to Participants & guests that says “Allow chat in meetings.”

Check to see if your problem has been resolved now. I not, move on to the next fix.

Check out the Guest Access Settings.

This issue with the guest chat might occasionally occur if the guest access settings are not set up properly. Therefore, check that the guest access settings are appropriate for your purposes.

The steps to verify the guest access settings are as follows:

Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
The Org-wide settings area can be expanded on the left pane.
Choose the option for guest access.
Next, turn on the option Allow Guest Access in Teams.
The Chat option may be turned on by scrolling down and toggling it to ON.
Finally, invite your guest to join the Team meeting once more to see whether the repair was successful.

For premium users only, the Microsoft Team admin center is accessible. Contact your IT administrator for assistance if you are a paying user and still do not have access to the admin center.

It is to be noted that on Microsoft Team, it can take up to 24 hours for changes to take effect.

Don’t Cross the Maximum Attendee Limit.

One thousand people are the maximum that may join a Microsoft Teams meeting. But if you somehow surpass that number of users, the Team’s app begins to break. As a result, the visitor is unable to communicate during a meeting.

Check to see whether you’ve exceeded the maximum number to avoid that problem.

Schedule A Private Meeting

Only the Team member has access to the chat feature when you create a channel meeting. However, you must set up a private meeting that is accessible to all visitors and outside users if you want your guests to talk as well.

However, anybody is welcome to join the meeting via this private chat. Because it is now an exclusive meeting, this action implies the private planned meeting is independent of the Team’s account.

FAQs

Why can’t guests access chat in Teams?

Only the team members who are participants in the channel meeting have access to the conversation. The chat features are not available to guests. Alternatively, make a private meeting possible rather than a channel meeting. Everyone will be able to access the chat in this way, regardless of the accounts they are logged into.

How do I enable chat in Microsoft Teams for a guest?

Enable the chat option and expand the Meetings section in the Microsoft Team admin center.

To activate the option to allow conversation during meetings, follow these steps:

First, open the Admin center for Microsoft Teams.
Go ahead and enlarge the section on meetings.
Next, select the “Allow conversation in meetings” checkbox next to Participants & visitors.

Can guest Users chat in Teams?

Answer: If the visitor is not a member of your Team and has only been invited to the meeting, there is no conversation option for them. Additionally, if the option to Allow chat in meetings is off and the permitted number of attendees is exceeded, a visitor cannot speak in your Microsoft Teams.

Cannot chat with external users’ Teams?

You may add or invite anybody who uses Teams, Teams for personal use, Skype (for consumers), or Skype for Business to a one-on-one conversation using External Access for Teams. This covers both private one-on-one conversations and brand-new or ongoing group chats for users of Teams or Teams for personal use.

Can you join Teams as a guest?

No matter if you have a Teams account or not, you may attend a meeting at any moment from any device. Follow these instructions to join as a guest if you don’t already have an account. Please take note that some gatherings do not permit guests to attend. Select “Join Microsoft Teams Meeting” from the meeting invitation page.

Wrapping It Up

You will be annoyed when you arrive at a meeting as a guest and the chat feature is disabled. However, you don’t need to do anything; simply make sure that visitors are added to the Team account and turn on the option for Allow guest access in teams.

Additionally, you may organize a private meeting for each visitor and outside user and select the option to allow chat in meetings. Because of this, if you use the earlier suggested techniques, your guest can’t view the conversation on the Team issue will be fixed.

This guide walked you through all the different fixes you can try out to resolve the guest’s chat problem on teams. Hopefully, this article will have helped you resolve your problem, and you can now get back to chatting during meetings. We wish you all the best.