3 Ways to Remove Users from Microsoft Teams

Removing the right people from Microsoft Teams doesn’t have to be confusing. Whether you’re cleaning up a project space, offboarding a teammate, or closing out a private channel, the goal is the same: keep access tight and membership tidy.
In this guide, you’ll learn three practical ways to remove users, directly in the Teams app, through the Teams admin center, and with PowerShell, and how each affects teams, standard and private channels, owners, members, and guests.
Table of Contents
Use Microsoft Teams’s UI
Here, you’ll use the Microsoft Teams UI to remove someone from a team, private channel, or group chat. You need to be a team owner or channel owner to remove members, as Microsoft’s Teams help articles note.
Remove someone from a team on desktop or web
- Open Teams and select Teams on the left.
- Find the team. Select More options (.) next to the team name, then choose Manage team.
- On the Members tab, find the person you want to remove.
- Select Remove next to their name, then confirm.
Helpful notes:
- You cannot remove the only team owner. If needed, first change another member’s role to Owner in Manage team, then remove the person.
- What changes for the removed person:
- They lose access to team channels and files.
- Their past messages and files remain for others.
Microsoft’s “Add or remove members and guests in Teams” doc outlines these controls in the UI.
Remove someone from a team on mobile
- Open the Teams app and tap Teams.
- Tap the team name, then tap More options (.) and choose Manage members or Manage team.
- Find the person, tap their name, then tap Remove from team and confirm.
Microsoft’s mobile guidance in “Add or remove members and guests in Teams” shows the same flow.
Remove someone from a private channel
- Open the private channel.
- Select More options (.) at the top, then Manage channel.
- Go to the Members tab.
- Select Remove next to the person’s name, then confirm.
Keep in mind:
- You must be the private channel owner to do this, as described in Microsoft’s “Add or remove members of a private channel.”
- Removing someone from a private channel does not remove them from the parent team.
Remove someone from a group chat
- Open the group chat.
- At the top, select View and add participants or the People icon.
- Find the person, select Remove from chat, then confirm.
A few tips based on Microsoft’s “Add or remove people in a group chat” help:
- You cannot remove someone from a one-on-one chat. You can start a new group chat without them.
- The removed person can still see the chat history up to the time you removed them.
If you do not see the Remove option
- Check your role. Only team owners can remove team members. Only private channel owners can remove channel members.
- Guests can be removed the same way as members. If you do not see them, switch between the Members and Guests views on the Members tab.
- For shared channels, manage membership from the channel’s Manage channel screen. Owners can remove individuals or connected teams there, per Microsoft’s shared channel guidance.
Use Torii
Instead of handling this directly in Microsoft Teams, you can use Torii, a SaaS Management Platform, to remove user from teams in Microsoft Teams. SMPs give you a central place to manage SaaS apps and integrations, enabling programmatic user on/offboarding, license visibility, subscription insights, and more.
Compared to a manual approach in Microsoft Teams, Torii lets you automate the task so it runs whenever a specified trigger occurs. Triggers could include a new hire, an employee offboarding, a contract renewal, and other events-saving time when this needs to happen repeatedly.
1. Sign up for Torii
Contact Torii, and request your free two-week proof-of-concept.
2. Connect your Microsoft Teams account to Torii
Once your account is active, 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
In Torii, create an automated workflow to remove user from teams in Microsoft Teams. Go to the Workflows tab, define a trigger, then add an action that removes user from teams in Microsoft Teams. From then on, whenever the trigger fires, Microsoft Teams will be updated automatically.

Use Microsoft Teams’s API
Here, you’ll use the Microsoft Graph Teams API to remove a user from a team with a simple DELETE call. This follows the Microsoft Graph Teams docs for deleting a conversationMember.
Get an access token with the right permissions
You need an access token that includes TeamMember.ReadWrite.All.
- For application permissions:
- Grant admin consent for TeamMember.ReadWrite.All on Microsoft Graph.
- Use client credentials to get a token.
Example curl:
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}&client_secret={client-secret}&scope=https%3A%2F%2Fgraph.microsoft.com%2F.default&grant_type=client_credentials"
- For delegated permissions:
- Sign in a user who has rights to manage the team.
- Request the TeamMember.ReadWrite.All scope during auth.
Identify the team
If you already know the team’s ID, skip this.
To look up a team by name, query Microsoft 365 groups that are Teams-backed:
Example curl:
curl -X GET "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups?$filter=resourceProvisioningOptions/Any(x:x%20eq%20'Team')%20and%20displayName%20eq%20'Contoso%20Sales'" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"
From the response, take the group id as your {team-id}.
Find the user’s membership ID in that team
The DELETE call needs the member object’s id, not the user’s id. List the team’s members, then locate the entry for your user.
Example curl:
curl -X GET "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team-id}/members" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"
You’ll get an array of conversationMember objects. Find the one for your user and copy its id field. You can match by properties like userId or email inside the response.
Remove the member from the team
Use the membership id you found to delete the member from the team. The Microsoft Graph Teams API for this is DELETE /teams/{team-id}/members/{membership-id}. A successful call returns 204 No Content.
Example curl:
curl -X DELETE "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team-id}/members/{membership-id}" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"
Verify the removal
You can confirm by listing members again or by trying to fetch that member.
To re-list:
curl -X GET "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team-id}/members" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"
To check a single member, expect 404 if removed:
curl -X GET "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team-id}/members/{membership-id}" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"
Notes that save time
- Keep at least one owner in the team. The API will block removal if the user is the only owner.
- Removing a member from the team also removes their access to the underlying Microsoft 365 group content and all team channels.
- If you only need to remove someone from a private channel while keeping them in the team, use the channel-level endpoint: DELETE /teams/{team-id}/channels/{channel-id}/members/{membership-id}.
Frequently Asked Questions
You have three options: remove people directly in the Teams UI (desktop, mobile, private channel or group chat), automate removals with Torii workflows, or use Microsoft Graph (or PowerShell) to delete a membership programmatically.
Team owners can remove team members; private channel owners can remove channel members. You cannot remove the only team owner until another owner is promoted. Guests can be removed like members and may appear under a separate Guests view.
Removed users lose access to team channels, files and the underlying Microsoft 365 group content. Their past messages and files remain visible to others. Removal from a team also revokes access to all team channels and resources.
Open the private channel, choose Manage channel, go to Members, and remove the user. You must be a private channel owner. To do this via API use the channel-level endpoint DELETE /teams/{team-id}/channels/{channel-id}/members/{membership-id}.
Get a token with TeamMember.ReadWrite.All, find the team id, list team members to obtain the membership-id, then call DELETE /teams/{team-id}/members/{membership-id}. A successful removal returns 204 No Content.
Verify your role (owner vs member), toggle between Members and Guests views, and check the channel's Manage channel screen for shared channels. If UI removal isn't available, use the Teams admin center or Graph API to remove the user.