Microsoft Teams - "Open with the desktop app" default setting has disappeared

Anonymous
2021-11-05T14:00:48+00:00

Hi,

We are currently using Microsoft Teams for team collaboration and we mainly use Microsoft Office desktop applications to open and edit our Office files. We do not use the integrated Teams editors or the web-based editors.

A couple weeks ago, the "Default behavior" option appeared in our Teams desktop applications and we were able to select "Desktop app" as the default way of opening files when double clicking a file in Teams. This is very handy for us and we recommended to all of our users to switch to this in order to open files.

But a few days ago, we discovered that this option is not available anymore in the choices presented : We now only have the "Teams" and "Browser" options, either from the general "Settings" menu or while right-clicking a file and select "Change default". The desktop app option has completely disappeared from the list. For those like me who configured Teams to open files directly from Office by default, the new default is now the Teams editor.

We tried to delete Microsoft Team's cache on one of our computers, but the option is still missing.

Is there a way to have this option back for our organization ? Is there something we need to configure in the Teams' admin center ?

Regards,

Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams for business | Files | Other

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-08-05T07:54:15+00:00

    This makes absolutely no sense. I can see why Microsoft would not include some features in their business plans as they cost more compute resources or additional programming, but this is not the case here!

    The editors in Teams are just rubbish compared to the full product for which Microsoft's customers are paying for in the business premium plan. Removing the button to edit files in the desktop apps only makes them semi-available to the users who are paying for the functionality of Office.

    This move somewhat "forces" some clients in to moving to a Microsoft 365 E3 plan combined with Defender for 365 plans almost doubling their monthly bill.

    @Microsoft, please reconsider this change!

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-09-30T01:51:52+00:00

    As Luka mentioned, the key is this:

    1. Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration
    2. Look on the right for "ProductReleaseIds"
    3. Change to "O365ProPlusRetail", which was O365BusinessRetail

    Worked for us, thanks!

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-05-23T14:36:45+00:00

    So I require a special licence to be able to open a Word doc in Word? What is wrong with you Microsoft? A real scumbag move.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-01-24T15:39:50+00:00

    No drawbacks that I've noticed yet. I've been using this workaround for several months and have seen multiple new versions of the Teams client on Windows and the setting/workaround has remained in place for me. I continue to happily use "open in app" as default, thank goodness!!

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-11-12T12:41:27+00:00

    Just a greedy or mean decision.

    What really ticks me off is no announcement. When this default apps feature first rolled out, announcements everywhere. And since then there have been bumps in the road and as such there are many troubleshooting articles out there trying to get the feature or fixes to show the feature.

    Then they yank it if you are not at least E3. No announcement.

    How many admin hours are being wasted trying to troubleshoot an intentional yet unannounced removal of a feature.

    What feature is next?

    Thankfully, Microsoft is not the only show in town and as they jack up the costs of everything, alternatives are starting to look pretty good.

    Microsoft hides these moves because they know how petty it makes them look. And it shows their disdain for their own customers.

    But the light sooner or later exposes these changes. And the alternatives out there are more and more eager for new business.

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