When a Team Owner Leaves

Issues

• Our Team owner left Bowdoin and nobody can manage the Team.
• Nobody can add people to our Microsoft Team.
• How do I find out who owns a Microsoft Team?
• Can I make myself the owner of a Team that has no owner left?
• Will we lose our files now that the owner's Bowdoin account is closed?
• I am leaving Bowdoin. What do I need to hand over for the Teams I own?
• What is an orphaned Team?
• Nobody in our department is getting the Team expiration warnings. Why not?
• As a member rather than an owner, how do I get a new owner assigned to our Team?
• The owner list still shows a colleague who left the college. Is the Team orphaned?

Environment

Checking who owns a Microsoft Team and restoring ownership to a Team that has none call for different levels of access. Reading the owner list needs only membership in the Team, while promoting someone to owner requires Team owner permissions.

• Applies to members and owners of Microsoft Teams at Bowdoin.
• Reading the Team's owner list requires membership in the Team and nothing more.
• Promoting a member to Team owner requires Team owner permissions. If a Team has no remaining owner, nobody inside the Team can fix it and an administrator has to add the first new owner.
• Renewing a Team, archiving a Team, changing Team settings, and adding a guest all require Team owner permissions, which is why a Team with no owner is stuck.
• Supported on Bowdoin-issued computers running macOS Sequoia (15.x), macOS Tahoe (26.x), or newer, or Windows 11, and on the current version of iPadOS. Personal devices are best-effort only.
• Sign in at office365.bowdoin.edu for the web version of Microsoft Teams. Menu placement varies between versions of Microsoft Teams.
• Not in scope: retrieving the personal OneDrive files of a colleague who has left, which is covered by Get a Colleague's Files After They Leave Bowdoin in the Related Articles section.

Resolution

Check whether the Team still has an active owner

1. Open Microsoft Teams and select More options next to the Team name.
2. Select Manage team.
3. Open the Members tab.
4. Expand Owners and read the list of names.
5. Check whether each name in the owner list belongs to someone still at the college. Names sometimes stay in the owner list after an account is closed, so the list on its own is not proof of an active owner.

If every name in the owner list belongs to someone who has left Bowdoin, treat the Team as orphaned.

What an orphaned Team means in practice

An orphaned Team is a Microsoft Team with no owner, which means nobody has permission to manage it. In an orphaned Team:

• Nobody can add a new colleague or remove someone who has moved on.
• Nobody can add a guest, change Team settings, or archive the Team.
• Nobody receives the expiration warning emails, because those emails go only to Team owners.
• Nobody can select Renew now when the Team is about to expire.

For the renewal steps and an explanation of what expiration involves, see Your Team Is About to Expire in the Related Articles section.

An orphaned Team keeps working day to day, which is why orphaned Teams go unnoticed for months. Members can still post messages and edit files. Nothing looks wrong until the day it matters.

Get ownership restored when the only owner has gone

A member of a Team cannot promote themselves to owner. Adding an owner to a Team that has none requires an administrator.

1. Agree within the department on who the new owners should be, and name at least two people.
2. Contact the Bowdoin College Service Desk with the Team's exact name and the names of the proposed owners.
3. Once ownership is restored, open Manage team and review the whole member list. A Team that lost its owner has usually gone unmaintained for a while.
4. Add a second owner immediately if only one owner was assigned. Every Team should have at least two owners.

Files in a Team's channels stay put when someone leaves

Files in a Team's channels belong to the Team, not to the person who uploaded them. Channel files live in the Team's SharePoint site and stay exactly where they are when someone's Bowdoin account is closed, whoever put them there. Nothing needs to be rescued from a Team's channels. For an explanation of where a Team's files live, see Understand Microsoft Teams: Channels, Permissions, and File Structure in the Related Articles section.

Add a second owner before anyone leaves

Adding a second owner is the fix, and it is the only cheap one. Every Team should have at least two owners, so that a departure, a leave, or a role change never leaves a Team unmanaged. Promoting a member to owner takes under a minute. For the steps, see Manage Membership of a Team or Channel in the Related Articles section, and for what the role involves, see What a Microsoft Team Owner Is Responsible For in the Related Articles section.

Checklist for a departing Team owner

1. List every Team you own. Include project Teams and committee Teams, not only your department's Team.
2. Promote replacements so each Team is left with at least two owners who are staying at Bowdoin. For the steps, see Manage Membership of a Team or Channel in the Related Articles section.
3. Move department files out of your OneDrive and into the appropriate Team channel, using Move to so version history goes with the files. For the move procedure, see Move Files into a Microsoft Teams Channel in the Related Articles section.
4. Hand over sharing with people outside Bowdoin. Review any guests you invited and any links you created for people outside Bowdoin, then either transfer them to a colleague who is staying or remove them. See Extend or Remove Guest Access in OneDrive and Teams and List SharePoint or OneDrive Files Shared with External Users in the Related Articles section.
5. Deal with channel email addresses and connected apps that route to you personally. See Set Up an Email Address for a Channel in the Related Articles section.
6. Say what happens next in each Team: who the new owners are, and where anything you moved has gone.
7. Archive any Team you owned whose work is genuinely finished, rather than leaving the Team to expire. See Archive Teams and Folders in Microsoft Teams in the Related Articles section.

Complete the handover in your last two weeks, not your last two days. Once a Bowdoin account is closed, every item on a departing Team owner's checklist becomes a ticket.

Additional Help

If you need further assistance, you have several options:

• Bowdoin Bot: Chat with Bowdoin Bot directly from any KB page for instant answers.
• Phone: Call the Bowdoin College Service Desk at (207) 725-3030.
• In person: Visit the Tech Hub in Smith Union during business hours.
• Submit a ticket: Request assistance through the Service Catalog.

Additional Resources

• Assign a new owner to an orphaned group
• Make someone a team owner in Microsoft Teams
• Team owner, member, and guest capabilities in Microsoft Teams
• Team expiration and renewal in Microsoft Teams
• Manage ownerless Microsoft 365 groups and teams