New Team doesn't have a General Channel

Anonymous
2024-09-03T14:22:01+00:00

I've just created a new Team and during creation I was asked to create the first channel name, I attempted to use 'General' but was told this was already used so I just carried on making the rest of the required channels. Now when I look within 'Manage Team'->'Channels' there is no General channel. It appears it was never created and If I try to create it manually I get the error "The name General is reserved. Try another name."

I have restarted Teams & cleared the Cache but still do not have a General channel.

Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams for business | Teams and channels | Other

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Anonymous
2024-09-03T16:33:25+00:00

Dear Callum Butler,

Good day! Thank you for posting in the Microsoft Community. We will be happy to help you.

It sounds like you’ve encountered a common issue in Microsoft Teams. The “General” channel is indeed reserved and automatically created when a new team is set up. you are right! I tested the same on my end, it seems the General channel no longer automatically created when creating a Team from scratch (a basic team), seems currently to get this General channel created, you need to use the More create team options and choose the "From another team" or "From a template" and use the "Manage a Project" for example.

This behavior will be reported to Microsoft for confirmation, and we will monitor it. We will provide you with an update as soon as we receive it.

Thanks in advance for your understanding! Your patience and cooperation will be highly appreciated.

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-01-10T23:10:26+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?

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-12-04T19:27:50+00:00

    It was mentioned earlier in another thread (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/unable-to-create-a-general-channel-from-scratch-in/34600a8c-5aa0-4b09-b220-bc74753ff2bf) that a fix is expected by Q1 2025. The original intended feature, to my understanding, is this one ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=395931 ). I have a few questions regarding the behaviors that will result from this fix:

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-09-17T12:34:48+00:00

    I have the same issue and I tried building one with the guidance you provided above using "manage a project." However I received an error message that states "We ran into a problem creating your team. Please try again later." I have been using Teams for several years and have never run into this issue. Currently there is no way to build a "general" channel despite the fact that it's the first channel on every other Team I have ever created.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-09-25T03:57:14+00:00

    Same Issue for me too.
    Please make sure Microsoft have a solution to add the missing General channel to Teams created without it, because re-creating a new Teams will not be an option (too many guests would be impacted).

    Thanks

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