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This article provides an overview of how to upgrade your users from a Teams Exploratory trial to paid Teams licenses.
Note
Currently, only self-service Teams Exploratory trials are available.
To see if you have users with a Teams Exploratory license, you can go to the Microsoft 365 admin center > Billing > Licenses > and scroll to see if Microsoft Teams Exploratory is listed. If it's listed, you have users with a Teams Exploratory license.
Step 1: When to upgrade
To check when your organization’s Teams Exploratory trial is expiring and how many active users it has, sign into the Microsoft 365 admin center and go to Billing > Your products. You're also notified before the Teams Exploratory trial expires.
Caution
You should make a plan to upgrade your users to paid licenses before the expiration date, so users don’t lose access to Teams.
If a user doesn't have separate SharePoint or OneDrive licenses and their Teams Exploratory license ends, they lose access to Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint until a Teams license is assigned. If a OneDrive or SharePoint license is assigned after the Teams Exploratory trial ends, they will still have access to their data, even if a Teams license is not assigned. After 30 days, associated Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint data will be deleted if appropriate licenses are not assigned. The user will still exist in Microsoft Entra ID. If users are assigned an appropriate license within the 30 days, their content will still exist and will be available to them.
For more information, see What happens to my data and access when my subscription ends?.
Step 2: Choose an upgrade path
Tip
We recommend Teams Essentials as the primary option for customers looking to upgrade their expiring Teams Exploratory trials. For more information, see Compare Microsoft Teams Essentials to other plans.
Depending on the subscriptions your organization currently has, there are several ways to upgrade from a Microsoft Teams Exploratory trial to a paid license:
Upgrade an existing Microsoft 365 subscription. Use this option if your organization has subscriptions to other Office products that don’t include Teams. For more information, see Upgrade to a different business plan.
- To see active users for an existing subscription, sign into the Microsoft admin center and go to Users > Active users.
Add users to an existing Microsoft 365 subscription. Use this option if your organization doesn’t have enough paid Teams licenses to cover the Teams Exploratory users. For more information, see Buy or remove licenses.
- To add users to an existing subscription that already has enough available licenses, see Move users to a different subscription.
- To see active users for an existing subscription, sign into the Microsoft admin center and go to Users Active users.
Buy a new Microsoft 365 subscription. Use this option if your organization doesn’t have any existing subscriptions to Office products, or if your organization wants to buy a subscription that’s different from their existing subscription to cover Teams Exploratory users. For more information, see Buy a different Microsoft 365 for business subscription.
Move users to a new license. Only customers who have users with the self-service Teams Exploratory trial can use this method.
- Sign in to the Microsoft admin center and go to Billing > Your products > Microsoft Teams Exploratory Trial. Choose the users you need to move. Select the Move button in the actions bar, and then select a subscription to move those users to.
If you’re not sure which Microsoft 365 subscription to upgrade to, see Microsoft 365 for Business. If you need more help choosing a subscription, or if your organization needs more than 300 licenses, contact your Microsoft partner or Microsoft account representative.
Step 3: Assign paid licenses
Important
Before you unassign any Teams Exploratory licenses, assign the new licenses to all the users you’re upgrading. Otherwise, they lose access to Teams until you assign a paid license.
To assign your newly acquired licenses, see Assign licenses to users.
After you assign the new licenses, unassign the Teams Exploratory licenses. For more information, see Unassign licenses from users.
Auto-claim policies
Next time you upgrade, use auto-claim policies to automatically assign licenses from paid subscriptions to new users without a Teams license. For more information, see Manage auto-claim policies.