During 2020, many organisations rolled out Microsoft Teams to support the need for employees to work from home (WFH) without paying much attention to the way Teams were named.
A reminder that when a new Team is created, it creates a Microsoft 365 (M365) Group. Every M365 Group has a SharePoint site (visible from the ‘Files’ tab in the Team channels) and an Exchange mailbox (used for calendaring and to store the ‘compliance copy’ of chat messages).
- The name given to the Team becomes the display name for the M365 Group and the SharePoint site. For example, ‘Testing multi word Team name’.
- The same name, less any spaces between words, becomes the URL name and the email address. For example, ‘/sites/TestingmultiwordTeamname’ and ‘TestingmultiwordTeamname@tenantname.onmicrosoft.com’.
What happens if you want to change the name of the Team, M365 Group or SharePoint site? And what are the potential implications of changing names?
Changing the name of the Team or Group
To change the name of the Team, click on the three dot menu to the right of the name, then ‘Edit Team’ and change the name in the dialog box that appears.
The new Team name will appear immediately. The name of the M365 Group will change soon after.
The name of the M365 Group (and its email address) can also be changed by admins via the Groups section of the Microsoft 365 admin portal. The name of the Team will change soon after.
The display name on the SharePoint site may take a little longer to change.
However, note that neither the SharePoint URL name (without spaces) nor the email address will change (e.g. https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/teams/TestingmultiwordTeamname).
How to change the SharePoint URL name
If you need to change the SharePoint URL name, go to the SharePoint Admin portal, click on the site name and, in the General tab area, click on ‘Edit’ under the URL name.
As long as you can access this section and the new URL name is available, it can be changed:
Keep in mind that, if you change the site URL name, the Team (initially at least) may throw an error:
But if you click ‘Open in SharePoint’, it will re-connect the site to the Team/Group and become visible again.
Implications of changing names
Generally there are no implications in changing the display name of a Team or a SharePoint site as described above.
However, ideally, there should be some correlation between the name of the Team/Group, the display name of the associated SharePoint site, and the URL name. It is not uncommon to see Teams or SharePoint site display names that bear little resemblance to the site URL name.
The main implication of changing a site URL name is that it may break any links, either shared or embedded in documents. For example, the example below is the URL of a link with the URL name highlighted in bold. If the URL is changed, the link will no longer work:
https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/:w:/r/teams/Testingmultiwordname/Shared%20Documents/General/ExampleDocument.docx?d=w3e26dbcb4e64406fb9c4123430o9sdlkdj57d8&csf=1&web=1&e=mlIihg
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