Blank contacts appearing in Teams

Question

Blank contacts appearing in Teams

D'hoest Arthur 0

We have encountered multiple users reporting blank entries in the new Microsoft Teams People app.

Initially, I suspected duplicate or outdated Outlook contacts, as in one case (mine) a blank entry appeared to correspond with duplicate contact records synchronized from Outlook. I could clearly see 2 contacts entries in Outlook which were exactly the same except for the address they had. Of these 2 only 1 showed in Teams, which made me assume that the blank one i noticed in Teams was the outdated contact (the one with an older address) that was somehow not resolved by Teams/Outlook contacts as the same contact.

However, we have now seen reports where the affected contacts were specifically assigned to user-created categories within the People app. This has led us to wonder whether category membership may be a contributing factor.

I have searched Microsoft Q&A and found very few discussions about this particular phenomena (disappearing/blank contacts) and I also haven't found any official acknowledgement of this behavior.

Has anyone else observed:

Blank contact entries in the Teams People app?
A correlation with custom categories?

Any feedback from customers, admins, or Microsoft engineering would be appreciated, as we are starting to see this pattern repeatedly within our organization and while myself I'm not really using this particular app in Teams, apparently for some users it's a crucial part in working efficiently hence why I'm reaching out.

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2 answers

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Answer 1

Dear @D'hoest Arthur,

Thank you for the detailed analysis and for sharing the patterns you've observed.

Based on your findings, both hypotheses seem reasonable to investigate further:

Duplicate or outdated Outlook contact records not being resolved correctly by the People app.

Custom categories retaining references to contacts that have since been modified, merged, or removed.

I am not currently aware of any officially documented Microsoft issue or public acknowledgment specifically describing blank contact entries in the Teams People app. Likewise, I have not seen any documentation linking the behavior directly to custom categories.

That said, the fact that you are now seeing the pattern across multiple users makes the category relationship particularly interesting. One thing I would be curious to know is whether the blank entries remain after removing the affected contact from the category and then adding it back, or whether the issue only appears within categories and not in the general contact list.

If the behavior is occurring repeatedly across your organization and especially across different users with different contact data, it may be worth opening a support case with Microsoft so the People app telemetry and contact synchronization data can be reviewed.

You can raise support ticket from Microsoft 365 Admin Center>Support>Help & Support.

For reference:  Get support | Microsoft Docs  

User's image

Thank you for sharing your findings and for the detailed analysis you've already performed.

I hope the information provided helps move the investigation forward, and I would be very interested to hear about any further discoveries or patterns you identify.

Wishing you a great day.

Warm regards,

If the answer is helpful, please select "Yes, accept answer". If you have any questions or new updates, please feel free to comment below.

Answer 2

D'hoest Arthur 0

Hi,

Thank you for your answer.

While a good idea, I would have tried this myself or suggested trying this if it weren't for the contacts to appear as blank, so there's no real way to attempt this.
That being said I've had 2 people now for whom the issue was resolved by performing a logoff and logon from the Teams app, which doesn't seem to fix it for everyone, I've had 1 person for who the issue resolved itself overnight.
I'm still trying to collect more info to further diagnose this but the randomness of all factors isn't helping much :D

Liora 3,285 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-10-27T15:34:08.11+00:00

Thank you for the update.

The additional information is very helpful.

The fact that the issue was resolved for some users after signing out and back into Teams, while another user's experience normalized overnight without any specific intervention, suggests that the behavior may not be tied solely to a particular contact record or category configuration.

At this point, it seems there may be more than one contributing factor involved. While the duplicate-contact and category hypotheses remain worth considering, the latest observations also raise the possibility that some cases are influenced by how contact information is refreshed or synchronized within the Teams People app.

I think your current approach of gathering additional examples and looking for common patterns is the right one. In particular, it may be useful to note whether the blank entries appear only in specific categories, whether they are visible in the general contact list as well, and whether affected users see the same behavior in both the Teams desktop client and Teams web client.

If the issue continues to appear across multiple users and a pattern remains difficult to identify, I would consider opening a support case so Microsoft can review the affected examples and any available Teams People app telemetry.

Thank you again for sharing your findings. I appreciate you taking the time to investigate the issue and report back with additional observations. Please feel free to share any further updates you discover.

Kind regards.