Tip: The 64-bit version is installed by default unless Office detects you already have a 32-bit version of Office (or a stand-alone Office app such as Project or Visio) installed.In this case, the 32-bit version of Office will be installed instead. To change from a 32-bit version to a 64-bit version or vice versa, you need to uninstall Office first (including any stand-alone Office apps you. Hardware requirements for Microsoft Teams.; 3 minutes to read +22; Applies to: Microsoft Teams; In this article. All of the requirements in the following sections apply to both the Microsoft Teams desktop app and the Teams Web app. Mac Quit Teams by right-clicking the Teams app in the dock, then holding down Option and clicking Force Quit. Open the Application Folder, select Microsoft Teams, and move it to the Trash.
Microsoft Teams is among our go-to collaboration apps as millions of people switch to WFH. You could call it the new kid on the block, releasing in 2017 when giants like Slack already had a well-established presence. But Teams has held its own, rapidly gaining momentum to outpace Slack in the last few quarters.
This has a lot to do with the app’s wide range of compatibility.
You can use Microsoft Teams on all major environments including Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and macOS. Microsoft Teams for macOS works exactly like Microsoft Teams for Windows – you could access the web version from any desktop device, or download + install the desktop client for macOS.
Microsoft pays regular and consistent attention to the Mac experience, with the latest update in May of 2020.
Installing Microsoft Teams for Mac is pretty easy. The company provides a PKG file for macOS computers – open the Team downloads page from your Mac PC and click Download. Follow the instructions provided by the installation wizard to complete the process; remember you will need administrative access for this step. This installs Microsoft Teams to the /Applications folder with a machine-wide installation.
The experience on Microsoft Teams for macOS is consistent with the company’s overall design for its desktop versions. It supports all key features including chat, conferencing, one-on-one calling, and in-app collaboration threw 250+ integrations. You could subscribe to Teams Free or the paid version – either way, these subscription credentials are what you need to install Microsoft Teams for Mac.
Interestingly, you need macOS version 10.10 or above to run Microsoft Teams. And, an active internet connection is essential – as a subscription-based service, Microsoft Teams for mac does not support any offline activity.
So, what exactly can you do with Microsoft Teams for Mac?
You could connect with your colleagues or external guests via chat and in-person calls. You could share files on the cloud, thanks to Microsoft Teams’ 2GB or more personal storage quota. You could even link other Microsoft apps, particularly the Office Productivity suite, to use Teams as a productivity enabler. But despite its library of integrations, Microsoft Teams for Mac is a standalone application, just like its other desktop clients.
On the admin side, Teams Paid offers extensive IT and security controls to help manage Microsoft Teams clients on macOS computers.
If you’re a power user, we’d recommend using Microsft Teams for Mac desktop client instead of the web portal. On web, meetings are limited to a single incoming video feed, you can’t share control of on-screen content, and there is no option to blur your background during a video call. Microsft Teams for Mac offers a far more enriching experience, letting you leverage the app’s full potential.
That’s not to say Microsoft Teams for Mac doesn’t come with its issues. Users have noted that it could take up a lot of computing power, and its impressive set of functionalities make Teams a resource-hungry app. But with a constantly evolving feature roadmap, we expect this to be quickly resolved, further improving the Microsoft Teams for Mac experience.
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-->This article provides guidance for how to diagnose and troubleshoot installation and update issues for the Teams desktop client app running on Windows.
Check whether Teams is updated successfully
Follow these steps to check whether a Teams update is successfully installed.
- In Teams, select your profile picture, and then click About > Version.
- On the same menu, click Check for updates.
- Wait for the banner at the top of the app to indicate that a “refresh” of Teams is needed. The link should be shown about a minute later as this process downloads the new version of Teams. The banner also lets you know if you’re already running the latest version in which case, no update is necessary.
- Click the refresh link in the banner.
- Wait until Teams restarts, and then repeat step 1 to see whether the app is updated.
If you see a failure message or if the version number is the same as in step 4, the update process failed.
Troubleshoot installation and update issues
Troubleshoot installation issues
When Teams is installed, the Teams installer logs the sequence of events to %LocalAppData%SquirrelTempSquirrelSetup.log. The first thing to look for is an error message or a call stack near the end of the log. Note that call stacks at the beginning of the log may not mean that an installation issue exists. It can be easier to compare your log against the log from a successful installation (even on another machine) to see what's expected.
If SquirrelSetup.log doesn't indicate the cause or if you need more information to troubleshoot the issue, see Collect and analyze application and system logs.
Troubleshoot update issues
When Teams is successfully installed, the log location switches from %LocalAppData%SquirrelTemp to %LocalAppData%MicrosoftTeams. At this location, there are two log files of interest, SquirrelSetup.log and logs.txt.
- The SquirrelSetup.log file at this location is written by Update.exe, which is an executable that services the Teams app.
- The Logs.txt file is used by the Teams app (specifically Teams.exe) to record significant application events. It will likely contain failure information.
These log files contain personally identifiable information (PII) and so they're not sent to Microsoft.
Ms Teams Download
Teams can automatically start the update process (depending on the policy) or users can manually check for updates by going to their profile picture > Check for updates. Both methods use the following sequence of events.
- Check for updates. Teams makes a web request and includes the current app version and deployment ring information. The goal of this step is to get the download link. A failure at this step is logged in Logs.txt.
- Download update. Teams downloads the update by using the download link obtained from step 1. When the download is complete, Teams calls Update.exe to stage the download. A download failure is also logged in Logs.txt.
- Stage the update. The downloaded content is verified and unpacked into an intermediate folder, %LocalAppData%MicrosoftTeamsstage), which is done by Update.exe. Failures at this step are logged in SquirrelTemp.log.
- Install the update. There are multiple ways to start Teams. The system automatically starts Teams when a user logs in or you can start Teams through a shortcut. In this step, Update.exe checks for the presence of the staging folder, verifies the content again, and performs file operations to un-stage the app. The old application folder in %LocalAppData%MicrosoftTeamscurrent is backed up to %LocalAppData%MicrosoftTeamsprevious and the stage folder is renamed to 'current'. Failures at this step are logged in SquirrelTemp.log.
If SquirrelTemp.log or Logs.txt don't contain sufficient information to determine the underlying cause and you need more information to troubleshoot the issue, go to Collect and analyze application and system logs.
Collect and analyze application and system logs
This section describes how to collect and analyze application and system logs to get more comprehensive information to troubleshoot the issue. You'll use Sysinternals tools to complete these steps. To learn more, see Windows Sysinternals.
Collect logs
- Download the Sysinternals tools.
- Extract the zip file to the %TEMP% folder on your local drive.
- Open an elevated command prompt, and then do the following:
- Run the following to go to your TEMP folder:
- Copy the setup and application logs. Note that depending on the point of failure, some of these logs may not be present.
- Run the following to capture the open handles.
- Run the following to capture the opened DLLs.
- Run the following to capture the drivers that are running.
- Run the following to capture the access control lists (ACLs) of the Teams folder.
Analyze logs (for advanced users)
Can I Download Microsoft Teams App On Mac
A failed update can result in unpredictable app behavior. For example, users may be unable to exit Teams, have a stale version of Teams, or can't start Teams. If you experience an issue during an update, the first place to look to find the cause is SquirrelTemp.log. Here are the different types of update failures, listed from most common to least common, and how to analyze and troubleshoot them using logs.
Unable to exit Teams
As Teams determines that it needs to update itself to a newer version, it downloads and stages the new app, and then waits for an opportunity to restart itself the next time the machine is idle. A common issue during this process is when another process or a file system driver locks up the Teams.exe process, which prevents Teams.exe from exiting. As a result, the Teams app can't be replaced by the newly-downloaded and staged app.
Troubleshooting tips:
- To confirm that is the issue that you're experiencing, quit Teams (right-click Teams on the task bar, and then click Quit). Then, open Task Manager in Windows to see whether an instance of Teams is still running.
- If you’re not on the computer that's having this issue, inspect the SquirrelTemp.log collected from the computer that's experiencing this issue and look for a 'Program: Unable to terminate the process in the log' entry.
- To determine what's preventing Teams.exe from exiting, look at the Dlls.txt and Handles.txt logs. These tell you the processes that prevented Teams from exiting.
- Another culprit that can prevent Teams from exiting is the kernel-mode file system filter driver. Use the SysInternals tool, ProcDump, to collect the kernel-mode process dump by running
procdump -mk <pid>
, whereis the process ID obtained from Task Manager. You can also inspect the Driverquery.txt log file to see the active filter drivers that may interfere with Teams. - To recover from this state, restart the computer.
File permissions
Teams creates a number of subfolders and files in the user's profile throughout the installation and update process. Because the app and the updater runs as a non-elevated user, read and write permissions must be granted on the following folders:
Folder | Used by |
---|---|
%LocalAppData%SquirrelTemp | Teams installer (for example, Teams_Windows_x64.exe) during installation phase |
%LocalAppData%MicrosoftTeams | Teams updater (Update.exe) to extract and stage the app package during update process |
%AppData%MicrosoftTeams | Teams app (Teams.exe) to save settings, app states, and the (pre-staged) downloaded update package |
If Teams is denied access because it can't write to a file, another software application may be interfering or a security descriptor entry may be limiting write access to a folder.
Troubleshooting tips:
- Look for 'access denied' evidence in SquirrelTemp.log or Logs.txt. Check these files to see whether there was an attempt to write to a file that failed.
- Open Icacls.txt and look for the effective access control entry (ACE) that blocks write operations by a user who is not an admin. Typically, this is in one of the DACL entries. For more information, see the icacls documentation.
File corrupted
In some cases, encryption software can change files in the %LocalAppData%MicrosoftTeams folder, which can prevent Teams from starting. This can happen at any time, even when the app isn't being updated. Unfortunately, when a file is corrupted, the only way to recover from this state is to uninstall and re-install Teams.
Note
If you can't determine the underlying cause of the issue by using any of these steps, you may want to try a Process Monitor session. Process Monitor is a Sysinternals tool that records access to the registry and file system.