Things change. Your favourite food, fashion, Australian politicians…
The same thing goes with your Teams too. Consider the scenario; you’ve got a well-established Team called Social with a number of channels. It has many coffee-themed files stored in SharePoint, as well as a OneNote notebook that lists all the best coffee places nearby, and when happy hour is.
Changing the Team name
Steve, a colleague of yours who created the original team wants to change the Team name to Discussions.
No big deal, that’s an easy change. You simply right click the Team name, select Edit Team and edit the Team name. You can even use Emojis!
Hit done, and your Team name changes instantly! Notice that the name change appears both in the Teams list, as well as within the Teams Channels too.
Great! But what about SharePoint and OneNote?
SharePoint
Firstly, if you’re browsing SharePoint files within the Teams channel itself, you won’t notice the name change. Files are still accessible, Sharing works exactly as it did before (URL’s don’t need to change or update), and everything is just as it was prior to the name change.
Opening SharePoint in the browser though reveals that the name of the SharePoint site remains unchanged:
If you’d like the name within the SharePoint site to match your new Team name, you can edit the name via the Site Information Settings:
Once saved, the new name appears within the browser. Note though that the URL for the SharePoint site renames unchanged. This is important though, as changing it would break shared links.
You’ll note too that attempting to use the new SharePoint site name within the URL fails
OneNote
Things are a little different with OneNote
After the name change, you’ll note that the OneNote tab within the Channel does not update itself automatically. This is easily fixed though by right-clicking the tab and choosing Rename
Renaming the tab won’t rename the Notebook though within OneNote. This name will remain the same as when it was first created.
Just like the SharePoint URL, this is important as if you attempt to rename it, you’ll break the Teams tab integration, as well as any external sharing links.
Conclusion
Renaming a Team is quick and easy, but there are a few things to consider if consistent names or URL’s are important to you or your organisation.
Have you tried changing a Team name within your organisation? How did it go? Leave a comment below.
If the original Teams name is not tied to any links can the URL be updated to match the new name/rename? Also, how does this affect the email that was automatically created when the Team was created and can that email address be changed as well?
Hey Carrie,
I’m not currently aware of of way of updating that URL without breaking something. The email link is unique to the team, and doesn’t usually contain the channel name and so you can continue to re-use it.
Hi,
Works as you’ve described except for OneNote online that stills hows the old name while Desktop app OneNote has the new name.
Where exactly do I find “site information settings”?
Hey Vanessa, you’ll find that within the Sharepoint site.
I renamed my team however I am unable to @mention the new team. How do I fix this?
Hey Kyra, I’d recommend completely closing Teams and then re-launching it to clear any local cache
Hi Craig, we had set up a Team name that matched to Sharepoint but someone decided to make a new Sharepoint site with a different name, so now we need the Teams files to go there instead. If we rename the Team to the same name as the new Sharepoint site and make sure all folders are named identically, will the files automatically reroute? Very grateful for your help. Thank you.
Hey Nicky,
No, you’ll end up with two different SharePoint sites (one with a slightly different name).
Thanks Craig. So is it best to build a new Teams Site altogether and name it the same as the new SharePoint name?
If we then use the file structure of new SharePoint and build that in new Teams, will the files from new SharePoint upload to new Teams?
Thanks again for your help.
Hey Nicky,
I’d advise either converting the SharePoint site to a team, or spinning up a new team and then copying the files to that new team
Hello,
Can you please tell me if the original creator of the Team is no longer with the company can we add new Owner and delete the Old one? Does this have an impact?
You can change owners of a Team without causing any issues.
Thank you, Craig.