Microsoft is now pushing users of its free legacy Teams app for businesses to pay to keep their data accessible after it retires on April 12. This current free app called “Microsoft Teams Free (Classic)” will be replaced by the new “Microsoft Teams”. (free).” While the latter will still be free, there will be no way to automatically move or migrate users’ old data, leaving businesses to do it manually or resort to the paid Teams Essentials tier. Will inspire.
Microsoft’s move to continually introduce different versions of products can be incredibly confusing, as was the case with this recent teams, According to Microsoft, it will soon be deprecating its free legacy Teams app for businesses named “Microsoft Teams Free (Classic)”. It will then be replaced by a new one called Microsoft Teams (free), which users can also use for free. However, the slight change in name should no longer be Microsoft Teams Free (Classic)’s biggest concern. As Microsoft explains it announcement pageUsers of the legacy app should upgrade to the paid Teams Essentials plan to retain access to their data.
“Designed specifically with small and medium-sized businesses in mind, Teams Essentials is the latest version of Teams, which you can buy separately from the Microsoft 365 offerings,” Microsoft says on its FAQ. “After April 12, 2023, Microsoft will no longer support Teams Free (Classic). By upgrading to Teams Essentials by that date, you will retain access to your data.”
Businesses that still want to use Teams for free can sign up for the new free version of Teams. However, Microsoft emphasizes that “data will not be retained (including data from existing channels, chats, and recurring meetings).” This means a huge inconvenience, especially for businesses that have large amounts of data on a version they believe will be accessible for a high number of years, if not forever.
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