Background noise in a Teams meeting is one of the most disruptive things for everyone involved. As a meeting organiser or presenter, you have tools to mute participants — either individually or all at once. Here is how to manage audio in a Teams meeting.
Mute Everyone at Once (as Meeting Organiser)
- In the meeting, click Participants in the meeting toolbar (the person icon)
- The participant list opens on the right
- Click the three dots (···) at the top of the participant list
- Click Mute all
All participants are muted immediately. A notification tells them they’ve been muted.
Prevent Participants from Unmuting Themselves
After muting all, you can prevent participants from unmuting without your permission:
- In the participant panel, click the three dots at the top
- Click Don’t allow attendees to unmute
Participants will see a message that the organiser has muted them and they cannot unmute themselves. This is useful for large meetings, webinars, or presentations where you need strict audio control.
To allow unmuting again, go back to the same menu and click Allow attendees to unmute.
Mute a Specific Person
- Open the participant list
- Hover over the person’s name
- Click the microphone icon that appears, or click their three-dot menu and select Mute participant
Note: you can mute a specific participant, but they can unmute themselves again unless you’ve disabled unmuting for everyone.
Set Up a Meeting So Everyone Joins Muted
To prevent the chaos of everyone joining unmuted at the start of a large meeting, configure this in the meeting options before the meeting:
- In the Teams calendar, open the meeting
- Click Meeting options
- Set Allow mic for attendees to Off
- Save the options
All attendees will join muted and won’t be able to unmute unless the organiser allows it. You can still unmute specific individuals during the meeting.
Hard Mute vs Soft Mute
When you mute a participant in Teams, it’s a soft mute — they receive a notification and can unmute themselves unless you’ve explicitly disabled unmuting. There is no hard mute that prevents individual unmuting without also restricting everyone. This is a deliberate Microsoft design decision to give participants some control.
Managing Noise Without Muting — Noise Suppression
For background noise like typing, fans, or ambient office sounds, Teams has built-in noise suppression that each participant can enable for their own microphone:
- Click the three dots in the meeting → Settings → Device settings
- Under Noise suppression, select High
This is worth reminding participants to enable rather than muting them — it handles most background noise without removing their ability to speak.
