Controlling data sharing, visibility, and access permissions in Teams Free
To remove the old phone number from Microsoft Teams Free while keeping chat history, the phone number must first be removed or changed on the underlying Microsoft account, then Teams needs to be refreshed to pick up the change.
Follow these steps:
- Go to Manage how you sign in to Microsoft: https://account.live.com/names/Manage and sign in with the same Microsoft account used in Teams.
- Under your account aliases, select Add phone number and add your new phone number if it is not already listed.
- After verifying the new phone number, select Make primary (if you want it to be the main sign-in alias).
- Once the new phone number is added and (optionally) set as primary, remove the old phone number by selecting Remove next to that number.
- The old number must be removed so it can no longer be used to search for or sign in to your account.
- A primary alias cannot be removed until another email/phone number exists on the account.
Then refresh Teams so it reflects the change:
- On desktop: Sign out of Microsoft Teams Free, then sign back in using the updated email/phone number.
- On mobile: Uninstall the Microsoft Teams Free app, reinstall it from the Google Play Store or iOS App Store, then sign in with the updated email/phone number.
These steps keep the same Microsoft account (and therefore your Teams chat history) while ensuring the old phone number is no longer associated with it. The new owner of that phone number will not get access to your existing Teams account and will instead have a separate account if they sign up.
If the system reports that the phone number is already taken when adding or moving numbers between accounts, first sign in to the account currently holding that phone number at https://account.live.com/names/manage, remove it there, sign out, then sign in to the correct account and add the number.
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