Teams Status Unknown: What It Means, the Layoff Rumor, and the Fix

Status unknown on Microsoft Teams means Teams asked for someone's presence and did not get an answer. It shows as a plain grey circle with no x. Nobody can choose it. Microsoft's troubleshooting article lists four causes: the person has not signed in to Teams, they set Appear offline, a network problem is affecting the presence service, or they use Skype for Business. You also see it for many people in other organizations, whose presence your company does not receive.

Status unknown on its own does not mean someone was fired. A deleted account shows a different sign: the name itself changes to Unknown user.

For the other Teams icons, see Microsoft Teams status icons meaning.

Why Teams shows Status unknown

Microsoft Learn, A contact's presence status is unknown in Teams, gives these causes:

Two more cases come up often:

• • People outside your organization. Presence for external and guest contacts depends on your company's external access settings, which admins set in the Teams admin center. If presence is not shared, their dot stays unknown.
• • Right after sign-in or an update. Presence can take a few minutes to load after Teams starts. Microsoft also notes that for mailboxes hosted on-premises, "presence delays of one hour (maximum) are expected".

Status unknown is different from Offline. Offline, the grey circle with a white x, is a known answer: the person is not signed in on any device. Unknown means no answer came back. The grey x is covered in what does the grey x mean on Teams. If you are the one stuck on Offline, see Teams status stuck on Offline.

Status unknown in the Teams code

We downloaded the Teams web client from teams.microsoft.com on 7 October 2026 and printed the part that turns a presence answer into a status, here as Teams passes it on to Office apps such as Outlook:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# Download the Teams web client and print how it passes your Teams presence to Office apps.
import re, urllib.request
UA = {"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh) Chrome/140.0"}
def get(u): return urllib.request.urlopen(urllib.request.Request(u, headers=UA), timeout=60).read().decode()
html = get("https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/")
url = next(u for u in re.findall(r"https://[^\"'\s]+?/hashed-assets/[^\"'\s]+?\.js", html) if "onecdn" in u and "/async-entry-" in u)
js = get(url)
m = re.search(r'\(\)\(([^)]*)\)\.find\(\w+=>\w+===\w+\.activity\)\|\|"(\w+)"', js)
print("activities Teams knows:", m.group(1).replace('"', ""))
print("anything else becomes:", m.group(2))
pairs = re.findall(r'\["(\w+)","(\w+)"\]', re.search(r"=new Map\((\[\[\"InACall\".*?\]\])\)", js).group(1))
print(f"{'Teams activity':<24} shown to Office apps as")
for teams, office in pairs:
    print(f"{teams:<24} {office}")

Output:

activities Teams knows: InACall,InAConferenceCall,InAMeeting,Presenting,OffWork,Available,Inactive,Busy,DoNotDisturb,BeRightBack,Away,Offline,UrgentInterruptionsOnly,PresenceUnknown,OutOfOffice
anything else becomes: PresenceUnknown
Teams activity           shown to Office apps as
InACall                  OnThePhone
InAConferenceCall        InAMeeting
InAMeeting               InAMeeting
Presenting               Presenting
OffWork                  Offline
Available                Online
Inactive                 Idle
Busy                     Busy
DoNotDisturb             Focusing
BeRightBack              BeRightBack
Away                     Away
Offline                  Offline
UrgentInterruptionsOnly  Focusing
PresenceUnknown          Unknown
OutOfOffice              OutOfOffice

The "anything else" line is the point. Teams knows 15 presence values. When the answer from the presence service is missing or is a value outside that list, the code does not guess: it falls back to PresenceUnknown, which Office apps show as Unknown. That is why a network problem, a contact on Skype for Business or an external user whose presence is not shared all end up as the same grey circle. The list also shows that no setting you can choose maps to Unknown.

Does Status unknown mean someone was fired?

This is the most searched version of the question, and threads on Reddit and Blind trade stories of coworkers turning "unknown" before a layoff. The status alone does not show it. Every cause Microsoft lists applies to people who still work there, and an outage or a VPN problem can turn a whole team unknown at once.

What changes when an account is removed is the person, not the dot:

• • Name changes to Unknown user. When IT deletes an account, existing chats show the name as Unknown user.
• • Email bounces. A message to their address comes back as undeliverable.
• • They leave shared teams and channels. Directory search stops finding them.

If their name, photo and email still work, and only the dot is grey with no x, the likely cause is technical. The quickest way to know is to ask. What Teams shows admins about each person is in does Microsoft Teams track your activity.

Teams status unknown for everyone

If every contact shows unknown, the problem is on your side or Microsoft's:

• Check the network. A VPN that blocks Teams endpoints, or a captive Wi-Fi portal, stops presence updates while chat may still load.
• Sign out of Teams, quit it fully from the system tray or menu bar, and sign back in.
• Check Microsoft 365 service health, or ask IT whether there is an incident.
• Try Teams on the web at teams.microsoft.com. If presence works there, clear the desktop app cache (below).

How to fix your own Teams status stuck on Unknown

• Quit Teams fully. Sign out, then quit from the system tray (Windows) or the menu bar (Mac). Closing the window leaves it running.
• Sign back in. A fresh session reconnects to the presence service.
• Reset your status. Select your profile picture, your status, then Reset status. A leftover Appear offline with no duration never expires on its own.
• Clear the Teams cache. On Windows, open Settings, Apps, Installed apps, find Microsoft Teams, select Advanced options, then Reset. Or quit Teams and delete the cache folder:

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams"

On a Mac, quit Teams and run:

rm -rf ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.teams
rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2

Both are the paths in Microsoft Learn's Clear the Teams client cache for the new Teams app. Microsoft calls this a targeted step, not a first step, because it also deletes logs that IT may need. You sign in again afterwards; chats and files live in the cloud and come back.

• Check network and VPN, then service health. If it still fails, IT can collect logs; Microsoft's article lists what support needs.

If your status is yellow rather than unknown, that is Away, a different problem; see Teams status stuck on Away.

Teams web status unknown

Teams on the web uses the same presence service. When it shows unknown while the desktop app does not, check the browser first: a blocked third-party cookie or storage setting for Microsoft sites, an extension that blocks scripts, or an old tab from before a sign-in. Sign out, close all Teams tabs, and open teams.microsoft.com in a fresh window, or try Microsoft Edge or Chrome.

Quick answers

Is Status unknown the same as Offline? No. Offline is a grey circle with an x and means not signed in. Unknown is a grey circle with no x and means Teams got no answer.

Can I set myself to Status unknown? No. The nearest choice is Appear offline, which shows the grey x; see how to appear offline on Teams.

Why is an external contact always unknown? Your company or theirs does not share presence across organizations. Only an admin can change that.

How long does Status unknown last? For a sign-in or sync delay, minutes. For external contacts or Skype for Business users, until the setup changes.