Back in March 2024, Microsoft began pushing the New Teams app via an automatic update over the classic version of the app. Later in the same year, in May, the company penned a lengthy post detailing all the differences between the two apps. You can find it in our dedicated piece here.
Support for Classic Teams ended in October 2024, and the availability of the app will also end soon on July 1, 2025. As such, the company today shared that it is removing a feature on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center portal. The change has been labelled a "Major change" as it is retiring the option to open a file in Classic Teams. It does not specify, however, why it is removing it aside from mentioning that it's to "address certain security vulnerabilities."
Microsoft has assured, though, that this option will remain in the new Teams so we are assuming the new Teams app is immune to those flaws. It writes:
We will retire the option to open a file in classic Microsoft Teams starting April 15, 2025, and ending April 30, 2025. Instead, we recommend opening the file in the appropriate app (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or Microsoft PowerPoint) in the desktop or web, where we will continue to invest our development resources. This retirement is to address certain security vulnerabilities that surfaced recently with classic Teams. NOTE: This retirement will not affect file open options for the new version of Microsoft Teams.
This message applies to classic Teams for Windows desktop, classic Teams for Mac desktop, and classic Teams for the web.
The company adds that this change began rolling out a few days back on the 15th and will continue till April 30, 2025. It will be deployed automatically, and that no admin action is required. However, it does encourage the administrators to notify users about this ongoing change. If you have access to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center portal, you can view the message under ID MC1058266.
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