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

This is just part of Microsoft's plan to discontinue all desktop apps.

Very disappointing as all of the web based tools are inferior. New teams is worse, new outlook is worse, office tools run worse in a browser.

I know its cheaper for them to only develop web based tools and discontinue the others but it is not better for the customer.

can someone please breakdown for me how you do this part?

• Change the registry value "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration\ProductReleaseIds" to "O365ProPlusRetail

thanks!

Hi everyone, I've just found this thread and got a workaround. Per the below article, the installed Office instance needs to be O365ProPlusRetail:

Desktop app option is missing when editing Office files in Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

The instructions in that article say to run the following in PowerShell:

$officeLicenseRoot = New-Object -TypeName PSObject $officeLicenseRoot | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name License -Value $(Get-ItemPropertyValue -Path 'HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration' -Name ProductReleaseIds) Write-Host $officeLicenseRoot

If the response doesn't contain "O365ProPlusRetail" then that's probably the issue as it was in my case, even if you haven't changed anything and the Classic Teams client has and continues to work as expected. Rather than spend the afternoon building a new installation package for the "correct" edition, I updated the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration\

The value "ProductReleaseIds" had its data changed from "O365BusinessRetail" to "O365ProPlusRetail" and I was immediately able to select "Native App" in Teams for Office files, no need to restart anything.

While this may cause issues in the future, it's very simple to change the value back and forth until Microsoft patches this functionality back.

I totally agree with your thoughts. We have resorted to doing this for all users. The unfortunate thing is that most of our users are casual editors. Our content in some of our word files is complex enough that Word via the web or Teams doesn't work well. Microsoft has the option to open with the app, but many users just click on the file to open it up and then it is displayed on the web or teams depending on the default. This then causes all sorts of display issues and calls to the help desk. Unfortunately, we now have told people not to use Teams to look at files, but to sync files to the desktop and look at them via file explorer. While this works fine, it is totally against the direction that Microsoft seems to be going is to work on all files through Teams and or the web. Maybe this is really an issue with not having all the same features within the web versions of the office applications that the desktop versions have. Regardless, a very simple interim solution would be to add one more item on the default choice list to include Open With App. This would be consistent with the other open options. When the web versions of office catch up, then they can take the option away and we don't need the complexity of syncing all of the time for all users.

Same here... for now I still recommend my users to sync their most used Teams libraries to the file explorer. I support a lot of customers on their way from classic file shares to M365. My experience is that the change for the users is rather hard. Yes, changes are always hard... But not everything has to be hard. My goal is to organise it as smooth as possible. Tiny improvements like to default desktop-apps to open office files in Teams would definetly help to cope with the change better. Many people are used to work in their desktop-apps and in file epxlorer eversince. With Teams they're now entering the world of web-based apps. This will be the future, no doubt. But we're still in transition and unless the web-based versions cover the productivity of a user with the desktop-apps people will prefer the desktop version. And it doesn't matter if they work for an SMB or an Enterprise company. Therefore I don't understand the decision of Microsoft to remove the default-option for desktop-apps in Teams from Business Licences at this time. 1) This option is so basic that it should be included in every licence that also includes dekstop-apps 2) It helps with the transition to Teams/M365 and increases usability

Ss basicly it is something Microsoft decided to take out of most licenses and only include it in the enterprise apps, so you wont get it with business premium or business standard.

in my opionion a ridiculous decision.