How to Archive, Delete, and Restore Microsoft Teams Account

Microsoft Teams is great for team collaboration because it allows you to create and join multiple teams and organizations. Quite often you will want to test a few things and features before announcing it to the rest of the team or organization to use it. And after a while you don’t want to use the other account anymore. Deleting would be an obvious choice, but you can also archive it so that you can reuse it later by restoring it. We’ll show you how to archive, delete, and restore your Microsoft Teams account in this article.

But you can also archive it. This will allow you to access it or activate it again if you need to. We will discuss how to do this in detail below.

Let’s start.

How to delete a free Microsoft 365 Teams organization

There are two types of Teams accounts. One is the free 365 Teams organization which we will discuss now and the other is the regular free Teams account which will be discussed later below.

We’ll start with the team members and remove them first, then take it from there.

How to remove members from the Teams account

Step 1: Click on your profile picture on the right and select Manage Organization.

2nd step: You will see a list of all organization members under the Members tab. Click the x icon on the right to remove them from the team.

How to find the administrator email address

We need it for verification when deleting the account.

Your admin email address is part of your Azure account. Go to Groups> Groups I own and your admin email id should be on the right side.

How to reset the password

You must reset the password before you can proceed. Visit the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Step 1: You will be prompted to enter your account password, but instead you will select the Forgot Password link to initiate the reset process.

2nd step: Enter the administrator email ID that you found in the previous step. You should have received a verification code in the email. Use it to reset the password.

Delete the directory in Azure

Step 1: Open the Azure portal and click the menu icon to select Azure Active Directory.

2nd step: Click the Delete Directory button at the top, but you will need to perform some verification checks to complete the deletion process.

Step 3: Follow the links in the Action Required column and pass all checks. You can skip the subscription verification.

Step 4: You must cancel the subscription last. Follow the steps to first cancel and then delete the directory. The process will take up to 72 hours. Go back to Azure portal> Azure Active Directory and select Delete directory.

Check that all the check marks appear in green. Click the Delete button at the bottom of the screen.

How to delete a Microsoft Teams account

The steps are much simpler to delete the standard Teams account.

Step 1: Open the Teams account and sign in using your login details. Click the Teams button on the left and select Settings below.

2nd step: Click on the three-dot menu icon next to the name of the team you want to remove and select the Remove Team option.

You will have a maximum of 30 days to restore the team.

How to archive and restore a Microsoft Teams account

Deleting a Microsoft Teams account is more permanent in nature. Maybe you can archive it instead? That way there is always an option to restore it later if you need to. We will also discuss how to do this.

Open Microsoft Teams, click the gear icon to open Settings, select the three-dot menu icon next to the team name, and then select Check In.

A pop-up will jump and ask for confirmation. Click Archive.

Follow the same steps, but this time select Restore from the menu to restore the archived Microsoft Teams account.

Work with teams

While the steps to delete, archive, and restore the Microsoft Teams account are fairly straightforward, the same can’t be said for the free Teams organizational account. There are many steps involved, and several steps involved to make the process longer than necessary. But that’s how it is, and I guess part of the reason is that it’s signed into the Microsoft 365 account. Anyway, now you know what to do.

Microsoft Teams is popular with Office suite users and those who are deeply integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem. For the rest of the world, who needs an app for video calling and conferencing, that’s overkill. Zoom or Google Meet is a much better option. They don’t offer project management features like teams. So choose wisely according to your needs.