How to find orphaned Teams

Unmanaged Microsoft Teams can exist without active members or assigned owners due to user removals, role changes, or incomplete deprovisioning. These empty or orphaned Teams may still retain associated resources such as SharePoint sites, files, apps, and channel data.

Empty Teams must be identified to restore ownership, enforce access controls, and prevent unmanaged resources from persisting in the tenant. Once detected, these Teams should be either reassigned to valid owners, archived for retention purposes, or deleted if they no longer serve a business need.

This page explains how to find empty Teams in your tenant using the Microsoft Teams admin center, Microsoft Graph PowerShell, and using ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus, a dedicated Microsoft 365 administration tool.

Method 1: How to find orphaned teams using the Microsoft Teams admin center

Prerequisites

You need the Teams Administrator or Global Administrator role for the account you use to sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.

Steps

1. Log in to the Microsoft Teams admin center, navigate to Teams > Manage teams and click the settings icon.
2. Click the settings icon and enable Team members and Owners.
3. Look at the Members and Owners columns to identify teams with zero counts.

Method 2: How to find orphaned Microsoft Teams using Microsoft Graph PowerShell (Get-MgGroup)

Prerequisites

Before using Microsoft Graph PowerShell, please verify that:

1. The Teams Administrator or Global Administrator role is applied to the account you use to sign in to Microsoft Graph PowerShell.
2. You are connected to the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module.
   1. To check if the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module is installed, use this script:
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      Get-Module Microsoft.Graph -ListAvailable

      If it does not return a value, you will have to install the module.

   2. To install the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module, execute this script:
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      Install-Module Microsoft.Graph -Scope CurrentUser

   3. To connect to Microsoft Graph using the required permissions (Group.Read.All and Directory.Read.All), run this script:
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      Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "Group.Read.All","Directory.Read.All"

Using Get-MgGroup to identify empty Teams

The Get-MgGroup cmdlet is used to get the details of Microsoft 365 groups in your tenant. You can then filter this list for groups that are provisioned as a team. The following script will get you the list of empty Teams in your tenant.

# Get all Microsoft 365 Groups that are also Teams
$Teams = Get-MgGroup -Filter "resourceProvisioningOptions/any(x:x eq 'Team')" -All

$EmptyTeams = foreach ($Team in $Teams) {
    # Retrieve the count of members for the specific team
    $MemberCount = (Get-MgGroupMember -GroupId $Team.Id -All).Count
    
    if ($MemberCount -eq 0) {
        [PSCustomObject]@{
            TeamName = $Team.DisplayName
            TeamId   = $Team.Id
            Created  = $Team.CreatedDateTime
        }
    }
}

# Export the results to a CSV file
$EmptyTeams | Export-Csv -Path "C:\Reports\Graph_EmptyTeams_$(Get-Date -Format yyyyMMdd).csv" -NoTypeInformation -Encoding UTF8

Supported parameters

The following table describes the properties used in the Graph script to identify and report on empty teams.

Method 3: How to find orphaned Teams in M365 Manager Plus

Steps

1. Log in to M365 Manager Plus, navigate to Reports > Teams Reports, and select Team Sizes.
2. Click Generate Now to get an updated list of your Teams and their member counts.
3. Click the <filter>filter icon, select Members Count in the first dropdown, type 0 in the last field, and click Apply.

Stay on top of your Microsoft Teams activity

M365 Manager Plus’ Microsoft Teams administration capabilities help you view, monitor, and manage Teams environments on scales beyond what the Teams admin center is capable of. Track team and channel creation, membership changes, guest access, messaging policies, and meeting configurations, all from a single console.

Important tips

Frequently asked questions