Teams Mobile - Sync & Search Outlook Contacts and Shared Contacts
Teams Mobile does not show any contacts created in Outlook, or shared contacts from shared Outlook mailboxes. Please allow Teams Mobile to sync with those contacts so employees don't have to waste time re-creating and maintaining the SAME CONTACTS they already create on the Teams Desktop app. It's crazy in 2019 that our employees have to re-type phone numbers (or re-create each individual contact) to call our clients from the Teams Mobile app.
We are a very small company with lots of clients. Being able to search only fellow employees in Teams Mobile and not our client contact lists provides ZERO value. At least Skype for Business Mobile lets employees see their individual contact lists. Taking away that feature in Teams is a big downgrade to our business.
Please "do not disturb" our Skype for Business experience until Teams Mobile can show/sync our Outlook Contacts. Forcing Teams on our business before then is NOT HELPFUL.

17 comments
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WayneF commented
We are currently doing a Proof of Concept for Teams Phone System and approximately 16k users, the inability to search for or display contacts from your workplace (unless you have added all of them to your mobile device) just seems like a massive oversight. It almost seems like the mobile client was designed to only be utilized to accept incoming calls with no forethought given to outbound calls. About 1/3 of our user base work outside of the office from mobile devices (primarily Android) on a daily basis, the other 2/3 use a BYOD mobile device when away from the office, but primarily work in an office.
During the first day of my initial evaluation of both the desktop client and the mobile client, I didn't really notice that the contacts from the desktop didn't sync with the mobile client because I primarily work from my office, but as soon as I started creating the User Guides that our Proof of Concept users will use to formulate their recommendation to approve or deny the POC, the lack of an ability to sync desktop contacts with mobile contacts became a glaring issue and I am sure that our 1/3 of the workforce that use primarily mobile clients will immediately object to having to add their work contacts to their BYOD device. This definitely needs attention for larger deployments where users primarily utilize their mobile device on a daily basis. -
Anonymous commented
My issue are that:
* while the Contacts DO show on the iPhone, i have NO idea if the phone number is for a 'home', 'work'.
* i cannot search for a 'company' name without also adding it in, in Outlook, into the Surname fields. We need to be able to search on the Company Name field!... these are fairly basic....
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Dave commented
I can tell you that the big up and coming competitor of Microsoft for telephany ZOOM has that feature. It is a 1 time setup and boom all my contacts in O365 sync seamlessly to the ZOOM interface. This is a critical component to an unified communications platform.
Without it...DOA -
Ross commented
Yes, love this idea!
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Anonymous commented
I'd like to enter Contact Names and have it pull names from my Outlook Contacts, if they existed, to add to a meeting I was scheduling like it does in Outlook.
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Joscelin Trouwborst commented
Teams is the central collaboration hub, then why isn't it the primary (Lync, Exchange, Active Directory) contact management UX instead of the Outlook clients? I mean to say that interoperability is not enough!
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Werner Ertryckx commented
I am considering to use Teams in stead of our old PABX. Most of the telephone system vendors have synchronization with Outlook contacts built-in to their product or at least available as on option. I can not understand nor can I explain to anyone why Microsoft Teams in NOT able to synchronize to Microsoft Outlook (on prem). This would really be a game changer for anyone considering using Teams as a telephone system!
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Matt Peacey commented
This is a critical feature that is missing. I do not understand why contact could not be shared across microsoft products.
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Benjamin Leo Challinor commented
This is insane! Can't believe this is not a feature.
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Anonymous commented
you would think it would be a given that Teams would be seamlessly integrated into Microsoft office. creating two contact list streams is not logical.
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Luke Pulham commented
If anyone funds a solution, please update. Thank you.
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adam commented
please tell me if anyone has seen a solution for this
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Alexandre Labelle commented
This is a show stopper for me. All other phone vendor have Outlook contact sync, except Microsoft !!
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Martin Elliott commented
@MS Teams Team - Please get this fixed soon. It a big hole in Teams functionality.
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Anonymous commented
Syncing Outlook Contacts with Teams contact will make it useful
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Harry commented
MS, when this could be fixed? we have such issue also..
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Cynthia Santiago commented
Has this been corrected? Im having the same concern