Important changes from Microsoft

To best support our Microsoft 365 Education customers worldwide and accommodate new growth and demand during these unprecedented times, we are making a temporary adjustment to Office document behaviour within Microsoft Teams for students and teachers.

How does this affect me?

For students and teachers working with Office documents in Microsoft Teams, we are beginning to roll out a temporary change where there will be an additional step in order to edit a document. This is a change from current behaviour that allows users to go straight to edit mode when clicking on a document in the "Files" tab of a channel, a conversation, or from inside an assignment.

In all cases, upon clicking on the document, users will first see the document in view mode - they will be able to see the document content, but not make changes.

In order to edit the document, users need to click on the options in the top right of the white bar above the document content and select "Open in Browser" or (for users with Office for Windows installed on their device) "Open in Desktop App". This will open the document in Office in a separate window from Teams and allow the user to make changes.

What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

No action is necessary, this change will happen automatically. We recommend notifying users proactively if possible, so that they continue to understand how to edit their Word documents in Microsoft Teams without interruption.