Outlook appointments automatically become teams meetings

[German]Besides the issue, that Outlook constantly asking to open previous session windows on startup (see Outlook startup asks for "re-open windows", options to disable missing), there may be another bug that has made its way into the Click-2-Run versions of Office 365 via update. A blog reader informed me that in his environment new Outlook appointments automatically become Teams meetings. Addendum: There is now a fix and a workaround.

New Outlook appointments become teams meetings

Blog reader Michael H. from Germany contacted me by mail yesterday because he is struggling with a strange Outlook problem in his corporate environment. I'll just post his error description here:

Hello Mr. Born,

we have a strange phenomenon since one week.

For all users, new appointments automatically become a Teams meeting as soon as "Invite participants" is clicked.

When the "New meeting" function is used, the teams appointment comes directly.

Have you heard about this yet?

We are using the following:

Office 2019 CL2R 10399.20000

Teams 1.6.00.17564

Thank you very much for your help!

I haven't come across anything regarding this from the readership or Facebook groups. I put it therefore times here in the blog, perhaps something is known to the readership. It could be an isolated case, of course.

Found an old article from Microsoft

Michael wrote me that he found the following information on the Microsoft page How can I disable Teams Meeting being automatically added to any Outlook meeting invite? – which only roughly deals with the topic:

Outlook now automatically adds a Teams Meeting link to any meeting I schedule using Outlook – I would like to permanently disable this for my Outlook as my team only uses Zoom for meetings. There does not seem to be any documentation about this and I have been unable to find anything in preferences that changes it permanently.

Back in January 2022, the affected user noticed that Outlook automatically adds a Teams meeting link to every meeting he schedules with Outlook. The user would like to permanently disable this for his Outlook, where the Teams staff only uses Zoom for meetings. The user complains that there seems to be no documentation on how to change this. He also could not find anything in Outlook's settings to permanently change this.

Bug or Feature?

Is it another example of "Microsoft, they know what the user wants"? Or is it just a bug? In the course of discussion, MVP Andy David pointed out that you could uncheck the Add online meeting to all mettings option in the Outlook options under Calandar – Calendar options. But the blog reader wrote, that this option isn't available in his environment.

In a German Facebook admin group somebody wrote: "In Outlook options, disable 'Automatically create an online meeting' and you're done," which corresponds to the above remark. But if the option is missing, you can't use that trick.

Another user posted the following PowerShell command to block the option for the entire organization:

Set-OrganizationConfig -OnlineMeetingsByDefaultEnabled $False

to block the addition of online meeting links. Whether that helps is an open question. Then, as of July 8, 2023, Jeanne Marie Walsh issued the following action statement for Office:

If you don't use Outlook online very often, just open your internet browser and enter office.com in the URL, then login, if necessary.
Select the Outlook app from the menu on left
Select settings (cog wheel)
Select View all Outlook settings (at the bottom)
Select Calendar, then Events and invitations
Uncheck Add online meeting to all meetings
Select Save

There is a feedback from the concerned person, mentioned on my blog post above, who wrote:

Hello Mr. Born,

thank you very much!

Fortunately there are other colleagues with the same problem….

I just did Office 2019 update to 10400.20007 and problem persists.

The switch in the options does not exist for us. The powershell command does nothing either.

So back to go. From an administrator I have read on Facebook the following considerations (I summarize various posts):

If it happens to everyone, it is an organization setting in the M365 tenant.

Microsoft becomes an ulcer if the user is not able to set the appropriate setting in his organization?

Some affected users wrote an update of Office 365 solved the issue. But that won't work on Office 2016 – 2021. Another user wrote:

Last week I had deactivated the Teams plugin in Outlook for a user who rarely uses Teams and this had remedied the situation. Today I had to realize that MS had simply reactivated this plugin on its own and without asking.

I read the following thoughts from an administrator on Facebook (I'll summarize various posts):

If it occurs with all, it is an organizational setting in the M365 tenant.

Microsoft becomes an ulcer if the user is not able to set the appropriate setting in his organization?

I had noted that Office 2019 C2R does not use a tenant and portal to manage the settings (as in Office 365). This was followed by the following comment:

That's why I asked where the issue comes from. Because that's what ultimately determines where you can turn it off. The CMDLETS (see PowerShell command above in the text) mentioned above were purely related to online tenant basis if a M365 tenant is behind it. If he now has Office Perpetual (doesn't contain Teams) the Teams has to come from somewhere else. And that's where the root cause lies.

Microsoft has published the support article How to turn off MS Teams Meeting to all meetings globally. A German user has published a workaround. Add the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\TeamsAddin.FastConnect\

and the DWORD value LoadBehavior and set it from 3 to 0. Maybe that helps. At this point, I would like to ask you, are you facing the above effect in Outlook or is it perhaps an individual problem of the user mentioned? Is there a solution to disable this annoying behavior?

Addendum: There is now a fix and a workaround, see my blog post Workaround/Fix for Outlook issue: Appointments automatically become Teams meetings.