3 Ways to Change User Type in Microsoft Teams

Changing a user’s role in Microsoft Teams shouldn’t be a scavenger hunt. Whether you’re promoting a member to owner, downgrading access, or converting a guest, there are clear ways to align permissions with what people need.

This guide walks through three methods: in the Teams app, in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and with PowerShell. You’ll learn when each method fits, plus the tradeoffs for control, scale, and governance.

Table of Contents

• Use Microsoft Teams's UI
• Use Torii
• Use Microsoft Teams's API

Use Microsoft Teams’s UI

Here, you’ll use the Microsoft Teams app to change someone’s role in a team. These steps match Microsoft’s own Teams help for managing team members in the app.

1. Open the team

• In the desktop or web app, select Teams on the left.
• Find the team where you want to change the user’s type.

2. Open Manage team

• Next to the team name, select More options (.) > Manage team.
• You’ll land on the Members tab, which lists everyone in the team.

3. Change the role to Owner or Member

• Find the person in the list.
• In the Role column, open the dropdown and choose Owner or Member.
• There are two things to note:
  • Owners can add or remove people and change team settings.
  • Members can collaborate but can’t change team-wide settings.

4. If the person isn’t listed, add them first

• Select Add member.
• Start typing their name or email, select them, then choose Add.
• After they appear, use the Role dropdown to set Owner or Member.

5. If the person shows as Guest

• Teams marks external users as Guest. You can’t convert a guest into an internal member inside Teams.
• What you can do:
  • If your org allows it, you can still change a guest’s role to Owner or Member.
  • To make them an internal member, remove the guest from the team, then add their work account that’s part of your organization.

6. Confirm the change

• The change applies right away. The person may need to reopen the team to see new options.
• To double-check, open Manage team again and confirm the Role shows what you picked.

7. Do it on mobile (quick version)

• Open Teams and go to Teams.
• Tap the team name, then tap Members.
• Tap the person’s name, change their role to Owner or Member, and save.

Use Torii

Instead of making changes directly in Microsoft Teams, you can use Torii, a SaaS Management Platform, to update a user’s type in Microsoft Teams. SMPs centralize your SaaS subscriptions and integrations, enabling you to programmatically onboard/offboard users, review subscription details, and more-all from one place.

Unlike the manual method in Microsoft Teams, Torii lets you automate the task so it executes automatically whenever a defined trigger occurs. Triggers can include events like a new hire, an employee exit, a contract renewal, and similar milestones. This is especially useful when the change needs to happen repeatedly, saving both time and effort.

To change user type in Microsoft Teams from within Torii, follow these steps:

1. Sign up for Torii

Contact Torii, and ask for your free two-week proof-of-concept.

2. Connect your Microsoft Teams account to Torii

Once your account is live, connect Microsoft Teams to Torii (assuming you already have an account). Here are the instructions for the Microsoft Teams integration.

3. Create a Torii workflow for Microsoft Teams

Within Torii, you can create automated workflows to change user type in Microsoft Teams. You need to go to the Workflows tab, set up a trigger, and then set up an action that will change user type in Microsoft Teams. From there, any time the trigger is met, Microsoft Teams will be updated.

Use Microsoft Teams’s API

Here, you’ll use the Microsoft Graph API for Teams to switch a user between member and owner roles in a specific team. This does not change their Azure AD userType; it only changes their role within the team.

1. Get an access token for Microsoft Graph

You need an OAuth 2.0 access token that can read and write team members.

Required permissions:

• Delegated:
  • TeamMember.ReadWrite.All
• Application:
  • TeamMember.ReadWrite.All

Example token request with client credentials is:

curl -X POST https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant-id}/oauth2/v2.0/token \
-H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
-D "client_id={client-id}" \
-D "client_secret={client-secret}" \
-D "grant_type=client_credentials" \
-d "scope=https://graph.microsoft.com/.default"

The response includes an access_token. Use it in the Authorization header for the next calls.

2. Find the member resource in the team

You will patch a specific membership record, not the user object. List the team’s members to get the membership id for the target user.

Example curl is:

curl -X GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team-id}/members \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"

• In the response, locate the correct member by their userId or email:
• Save:
  • id: the membership id you will patch
  • userId: the Azure AD user id (helpful for confirming the right person)

3. Promote a member to owner

To make the user an owner, set roles to [“owner”] on their membership.

Example curl is:

curl -X PATCH https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team-id}/members/{membership-id} \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-D '{
    "roles": ["owner"]
}'

Expected result: HTTP 200 with the updated member object showing “roles”: [“owner”]

4. Demote an owner to member

To make the user a standard member, set roles to an empty array.

Example curl is:

curl -X PATCH https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team-id}/members/{membership-id} \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-D '{
    "roles": []
}'

5. Verify the change

Confirm the user’s role was updated.

Example curl is:

curl -X GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team-id}/members/{membership-id} \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"

• Check the roles property:
  • [“owner”] means the user is an owner
  • [] means the user is a member

Notes and common pitfalls

• You need to be an owner of the team or use an app with the right admin-consented permissions to change roles.
• This updates the user’s role within the team only. It does not convert a guest account to a full member account in your directory.