I want to edit my display name or give myself a nickname
When I @mention a team member it displays them as Last Name, First name which really interrupts the conversational flow. Slack lets me edit my display name.

97 comments
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Michael DePouw commented
Supposedly this was implemented but I don't see how to change my display name. Maybe it is still rolling out? 🤔
I know I have one account I'm a guess in and I my display name changed. 🤷♂️
>Say hello to display names
>Now, everyone gets a display name in Teams. Even people you chat with outside your organization. So, you'll no longer have to remember that long email address when looking for an old conversation, simply search for the person by name.
Why isn't there a link in that w/ more details? An animated gif of the behavior?
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Mike G commented
It's baffling to see this kind of high-visibility low-hanging fruit go unresolved and, in this case, even unacknowledged for almost three years now. Even "Planned: targeted for fall 2025" would be better than no response at all. This seems like a management failure.
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Amy E Dunbar commented
I can't believe I can't change a formal first name to the name the person uses.
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Nicholas commented
Seems like a no brainer. Pretty please microsoft...!
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Ryan Elsenheimer commented
This is now almost 3 years and 322 votes in, and its still not done...Microsoft, sometimes you are so obtuse...
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Reza commented
Teams definitely lacks features like sorting contacts and choosing a customized name for contacts when we use it as a user. Some Telegram App features needs to be added to teams.
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David commented
how is this not a thing?!?
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Dreivance commented
Any update on this, please?
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Vlad commented
How can you feel like your having a natural conversation with some if you have to call them by their first and last name. It doesn't seem natural. This needs to be fixed.
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Paolo Sardi commented
Who is the genius that designed Teams client's functions? I am supposed to remember my contacts by their email addresses and I cannot even show them with full name. I cannot list contacts by their last name (as we do in latin countries). I remember that even MS Mail in 1995 was better than this crapware.
There was a time in which Microsoft was leader in enterprise software. Now the product designers are children who can barely use Facebook and Instagram, let alone design an enterprise level software. -
Stephen Bielecki commented
I was honestly so disappointed when I found out you can't set an alias for a user. Slack has this, why can't Teams?
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[Deleted User] commented
I'm transgender and haven't legally changed my name yet. Teams deadnames me all day to me and all my coworkers. This is not okay. Preferred names need to be a feature.
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Randall commented
Ya Microsoft, why is this so hard for you to figure out? This seems like a really critical feature... I want a nickname for my team members.
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Anthony Yee commented
As a manager in process of integrating multiple teams with different cultures and responsibilities, have a basic option to allow more personal and normal exchange is very important.
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Andrew Penhorwood commented
Adding a nickname is very important. It is a deal breaker for us. We will need to use another solution due to this issue.
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Suresh Krishnasamy commented
My students cant even use their names in the discussions...they are all being referred to as numbers as its tied to their matric number... Its been 2 years, any chance of an update or something about the possibility of this being done?
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Anonymous commented
Agree, especially for guest accounts. Using their email address name is not helpful at all as that is sometimes obscure. It would be very useful to be able to edit these names to more meaningful ones.
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Camilo commented
This is the most necessary feature in Teams! It makes it hard to use natural language in conversation, which is what Teams is supposed to do.
Competitive software (e.g. Slack) let me do this already. -
Anonymous commented
This is a necessary feature. It is ridiculous people don't have the ability to use preferred name as their display name.
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Ian Caldwell commented
We need a nickname feature in Teams - with the admin option to enable or disable. For example, our office locations include Thailand, where everyone uses nicknames as their work names - but not as their first name or last name.