Microsoft Teams Status Stuck on Out of Office (FIXED)
Email and chat services don’t really turn off. You can sign out of a chat application but people will still be able to send you messages. When you next log in, the message will be there, unread.
The problem with messages accumulating like this is that they’re delivered but not read, giving the impression that the messages have been ignored. To work around this, there is ‘Out of Office’.
Out of Office Message and Microsoft Team Status
An Out of Office message is generally set for emails where, if you get an email during your hiatus, a message is automatically sent to the sender informing them that you won’t reply until you’re back. It’s a simple, practical, and polite way to let others know you’re not reading their messages.
The same concept works for chat services and clients. An out of office message tells anyone who sends you a message that you aren’t actively checking them.
The feature may have different names (on Slack it’s called snooze notifications), but the principle is the same.
Microsoft Teams Status is stuck on Out of Office
Microsoft Teams allows users to set an Out of Office status. If you set an Out of Office message in Outlook Microsoft Teams can also sync the information from there.
When you remove the Out of Office alert from Outlook, it should likewise be removed from Microsoft Teams.
If your Microsoft Teams status is stuck on Out of Office, try the fixes below.
1. Reset Microsoft Teams status
Microsoft Teams doesn’t have its own Out of Office status but it does have an option to reset its status.
- Open Microsoft Teams.
- Click your profile at the top right.
- Go to Available (or whatever status you see), and click Reset status.
2. Change status in Microsoft Teams
- Open Microsoft Teams.
- Click the ‘Change status’ option in the bar at the top.
- Click the delete/trash bin button to delete the Out of Office message.
3. Check Outlook invites
During your Out Of Office period, if you received a meeting invite that fell on those dates, but also extended beyond them to dates when you’d be back in the office, they will all be marked as Out of Office. You will have to remove this invites to get rid of the Out of Office status in Microsoft Teams.
- Open Outlook on your desktop or in your browser.
- Select the Outlook calendar.
- Double-click a meeting invite or event that is set to Out of Office.
- Once the event is open, open the Show As dropdown.
- Change the status from Out of Office to Free.
4. Turn off Automatic replies in Outlook
A simple way to turn off the Out of Office status in Microsoft Teams is to turn it off in Outlook.
- Open Outlook.
- Go to File.
- Click ‘Turn off’ under Automatic replies.
- Give it a little time to sync, and your Microsoft Teams status will change to Available.
5. Delete Microsoft Teams settings’ file
Microsoft Teams stores its settings in a local file on your system. Its setting do sync online and if you change them on a different system, they will sync to other devices as well but that means the local file is updated.
If your Microsoft Teams status is stuck on Out of Office, try deleting the settings file.
- Open File Explorer.
- Paste the following in the location bar, and tap Enter.
C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams
- Look for a file called settings.json.
- Copy it to a different location.
- Delete the file from its original location.
- Sign out and sign in to Microsoft Teams.
Conclusion
The Out of Office status in Microsoft Teams tends to get stuck more often when it is synced from Outlook.
The status from Outlook may, or may not sync which makes it an unreliable way to set the status for Teams but there is no way to turn the sync between these two services off.
I found that it is because someone else set their status to out of office. I had a coworker on vacation and they had set it to out of office so it showed mine as out of office. I opened his vacation on my calendar and set it to free and my status fixed immediately.