Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams for business | Teams and channels | Manage a team or channel
Controlling settings, permissions, and membership within Teams and channels
It's fixed on our tenant.
Unable to Create a "General" Channel from Scratch in Teams Desktop
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Anonymous
I encountered an issue when trying to create a new team from scratch in the desktop version of Teams. It seems that naming the first channel has become a mandatory step. However, I am unable to name the channel "General" as it shows the message: "The name General is reserved. Try another name."
Could anyone please advise on how to create a "General" channel from scratch in the desktop version of Teams? Is there a workaround for this restriction?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams for business | Teams and channels | Manage a team or channel
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
44 answers
Sort by: Most helpful
-
Anonymous
2025-05-22T14:29:45+00:00 -
Anonymous
2025-01-10T23:10:19+00:00 Whoever is in charge of New Teams and New Outlook should really spend some time out in the real work before suggesting some of these strange features. It's great that we can now define the name of it, but what if we want to be the name General. It's like they obviously put some thought into it because the added the safety check to not allow the word General. But it never cross their mind that someone would like to call it General when they first create it?
-
Anonymous
2024-12-17T14:47:03+00:00 I also agree. I'm also having the same issue weather creating from scratch or from another team
-
Anonymous
2024-12-06T16:18:24+00:00 Josu - obviously I wouldn't be wasting time on this topic or searching the interweb for a solution IF THE BUG WASN'T AFFECTING US.
We have many existing Teams, yes, that are proper with a General folder - I created a NEW team on Teams desktop and tried to mirror our naming conventions and could not.
Trying to make the new Team match the existing Teams led me to this thread.
As noted in my second post, to fix I had to blast the Team and create a new one using one of the other functional methods (in my case starting at Sharepoint). I had to use a slightly different name, but alas, all is now well.
-
Anonymous
2024-12-06T11:34:18+00:00 This is incomprehensible. And a multi-month fix to change a channel name? It may seem minor - but we have lots of existing Teams that use General - not gonna change nomenclature now.
I have already created the Team, and deleting and starting anew appears to take 30 days while I wait on the email address from deleted group to be purged so I can can re-use the current email address. That is also preposterous.
The forced non-General channel created is "Main" - is acting as General - it even said when I intended to change it that IF I changed FROM "General" I won't be able to change it back.
Need ability to have one General folder that is located at top of channel for every Team.
Thank you for prompt attention.
Hi Myles,
Not sure I fully understand what you mean but, this bug does not affect any of your existing teams.
It only happens when you create a new team and try to pick General as the name of your first channel.
In any case, there are a couple of workarrounds published in this thread:
- Create your new teams from the Teams admin portal.
- Create your new teams from the Teams mobile app.
In those 2 cases the first channel will be automatically named General and no questions asked.
I hope this helps
Josu