Hello readers. Happy New Year! Hope you’re well.
Ultra quick post today.
I noticed today that Outlook wasn’t displaying presence for some people when it usually does. I checked the Skype for Business client (you know, not Teams, the other one 😉 ) and I could see presence. So I found someone in Outlook that showed their presence and I moved the mouse cursor over their name to get the calling card popup.
Then I clicked the speech bubble to start an IM. Curiously, it opened Microsoft Teams instead of starting a new Skype for Business chat.
So I went one further and opened the contact card and expanded the ellipses menu to start a call.
And again, the Microsoft Teams application opened and started a call to the number. The call failed in my case since I don’t have the Phone System license currently.
I didn’t remember changing any associations for IM or Tel or Callto protocols, but thought I would check. System settings -> Apps -> Default Apps – scroll down to the bottom.
Click on Set defaults by app and scroll down to Teams and click Manage
This opens the File type and protocol associations for Teams. Mine was largely set to choose a default.
I changed IM to Skype for Business and I closed and reopened Outlook. Tested again and IM still opened Teams.
I repeated with Callto and TEL and the same happened.
I remembered seeing a tick box in the Microsoft Teams client. Open Teams and click your photo and settings.
Under General, there is a tick box for Register Teams as chat app for Office.
And it was ticked. I didn’t remember ticking this. I still use Skype for Business as the default for IM and calling and I use Teams for collaboration and some meetings and calling. At least for now.
I un-ticked this and restarted Outlook and tested. And low and behold, I was back to using Skype for Business for chat and calling.
A few things to think about here.
- Somehow, this got ticked by itself. I didn’t do it.
- Although it says default app for chat, it also means presence and calling.
- It overrides the Windows settings for default apps by protocol
If this or any other post has been useful to you please take a moment to share. Comments are welcome.
Hi Randy,
Thanks for sharing your solution on this, it was bothering me from past few days, and everywhere i can see changes in editconfig etc., but yours was accurate and exact solution I was looking for.
Thanks again.
With Best Regards,
Subroto B
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Happy to have helped you Subroto
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Thank you! This was driving me crazy; I’d have a couple chats open and need to restart, then when I tried to pick up a thread again, it started fresh in Teams, losing all the history. Not that I’m a fan of conversation history; I really wish it would clean itself up, but that’s another topic (I did have an exe at one time to do this but it somehow became outlawed at my company).
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Howdy, looked promising BUT: Teams resets this every time it’s started. Maybe it’s the “every-time-installer” of the “free” version?
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We use Cisco Jabber and we also use Microsoft Teams (for some things) and seems every time I reboot my computer or restart MS Teams, MS Teams re-checks itself as the registered Chat app. Is there a way to have this not think it is boss and take over?
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Thanks, this saved my day. Did not work, since I installed Teams and accepted it to be my default chat app. No idea how to cure that! This was spot on!
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seems to re-tick itself. possibly due to change of island mode in Teams
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Hi Randy, Thanks for your post…We un-checked the option “register teams as the chat app for office” but after a restart this option gets checked again. We still use Skype as our default chat client and there is no GPO pushed to enable the above teams chat app option as default one for office. The co-existence mode for users are in Island mode. Any idea on why this option gets enabled again.
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I haven’t seen it automatically set it after client restarts. Sign out and back in can occasionally do strange things
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Every time you retart Teams it is checked again…
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Does not work in Outlook 365. Once you disable “Register Teams as a chat application for Microsoft Office”, the telephone numbers in your contacts turn from links to plain text, and you cannot click them anymore to be opened in a softphone app.
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Not something I’ve seen. But thanks. Will look
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