Five things I hate about Microsoft Teams

I use Microsoft Teams heavily every day, and over time, a few frustrations have become impossible for me to ignore.

Regular readers may have noticed that I frequently write about Microsoft Teams here at Neowin. This is not because I adore the software, but because I use it heavily at my day job, so I feel qualified to write about it authoritatively, especially when presenting opinions. I've talked in the past about how I have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft's flagship online communication and collaboration platform, but now, I think it's time to focus on one side of this coin. So, here are five things I hate about Microsoft Teams, in no particular order:

1 - Performance

Although Teams is used by millions of people around the globe, it's extremely unfortunate that performance seemingly continues to remain a low priority for Microsoft. If you have used Teams, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Booting up Teams takes several seconds, and navigating across the tons of interfaces feels extremely sluggish.

This isn't even just limited to specific configurations. I've seen Teams struggling across all sorts of hardware, ranging from PCs to phones and even the web. It's honestly infuriating at times when you're trying to navigate to the Shared tab of a channel and the UI becomes extremely slow and unresponsive. Or when you open a chat in a dedicated window, and it takes a few seconds to show up. It can become infuriating, as it enforces a major hit on individual productivity.

2 - Lack of stable voice message functionality

I do not like sending voice messages at all. However, I do think they make sense in certain work scenarios where you have to communicate something with a colleague, and you're faced with several undesirable scenarios. Scheduling a formal meeting would seem overkill, calling ad hoc isn't possible because they are in another meeting and you'll be busy afterwards, and a chat message would simply be too long. In cases like these, I typically resort to a voice message that the recipient can check out at their own convenience.

The problem is that voice messages are presumably seen only as an "on-the-go" functionality by Microsoft, which means that it's not available on desktop and web variants at all. This is ludicrous, because I do feel that it can be very useful in desktop environments too, as explained above. Even beyond that, voice messages are extremely unreliable. I think that this has something to do with Microsoft's technical implementation, considering they work perfectly in other messaging apps like WhatsApp, but you'll regularly be greeted with errors about unsent messages when you deal with Teams. In fact, the app won't even let you know until you manually open the associated chat again and notice the error message next to your voice note. Really, Microsoft?

3 - "Away" status

Teams has this feature where it automatically shows your online status based on several factors. These include Available, Busy, Do not Disturb, Be right back, Appear away, and Appear offline. You can manually set these statuses as well.

However, a major problem that many of us working in remote environments encounter is that Teams decides to arbitrarily set our status as "Away", even after a short period of inactivity. You could have been looking at lots of data open in an Excel sheet, and Teams would decide that just because your mouse isn't moving, you must be away, and it'll automatically set your status to "Away". To the outsider, it would seem like you take frequent breaks, which wouldn't do you any favor in environments where there is micro-management. Great job, Microsoft!

4 - Constant shuffling of UX

Teams offers a ton of functionality and integrations, for better or for worse. This includes chats, calendar, bots, apps, channels, and so much more. It can honestly feel overwhelming at times, and it seems like Microsoft thinks the same way, too.

The only problem with this is that after you've spent a lot of time getting accustomed to the UI, Microsoft will decide that it is time yet again to revamp the interface and "simplify" it, which means that all your muscle memory basically goes out the window. Now, you have another learning curve to face as your frequently used menus are now in completely new locations. Trying to find the Files tab in a channel? Oh, it's now called Shared. Not at all confusing, right?

5 - Search functionality is abysmal

In an era where AI has infiltrated basically all aspects of our lives, and Microsoft itself continues to champion Copilot, I find it surprising that Teams search does not use semantic analysis when it comes to search queries.

If I search for "strategy call agenda", I do not want search results and files that simply contain these words, I want Teams to contextualize this information and present me the agenda for a recent strategy call. This would make the search functionality so much more powerful, but all we have right now is a lexical analysis system that will surface thousands of search results, just because they contain these words. Do better, Microsoft.

I'm sure there are other things that I hate about Microsoft Teams. But these are the top five that came to mind when I started to write this piece. It's important to clarify that I don't hate Microsoft Teams, I use it actively, and I do think that its benefits far outweigh its quirks. However, I do believe that the company should be held accountable for at least some of the reasons that I have discussed above.

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Posted Sunday 17 May 2026 at 7:36 am AEST (my time).

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