TEAMS - mute by default when entering a meeting

you can achieve this by being the organiser going to meeting options, setting yourself as the only presenter - this will auto demote all participants existing and future joins to attendees, as then you have attendees you can select mic off for all attendees - this will literally force everyone to be muted - then you can turn mics back on when you are ready to start and attendees will have option to turn on or unmute themselves.

see screenshot - effectively solves the problem you describe - also solves auto attendees so kids cant mute or kick others.

when ready to start meeting re-slide the allow mic for attendees and they will still be muted just have option to unmute (if you like)

This works for the meeting organizer to handle at the beginning of the meeting, but it doesn't seem like it will address the individuals who join late and are unmuted and we hear all their background noise. Is that correct or am I missing something?

This happened to me just now, I was unmuted on joining the meeting and didn't realize it. It's embarrassing, to say the least. It's better to be muted and think you are unmuted than the other way around.

Please provide an option for users to customize this option based on their preference.

I can't believe Microsoft has not addressed this yet. SOOOOOOOOOO frustrating!!!!

I have a recurring morning meeting and I am often busy and caught on a hot mic because I forget to click mute before I join. Dozens of bigshots on the call and I occasionally get caught using profanity. It would be wonderful if the default was mute or at least be prompted before you joined.