Millions of Internet Explorer users will be locked out of Microsoft Teams unless they upgrade to Microsoft’s Edge browser instead.

Starting today, the web conferencing service will no longer be available on the legacy browser. The move was announced earlier in the year as part of a push by Microsoft to get people to upgrade to its Chromium-based Edge browser before IE reaches end of life in 2021. 

Microsoft warns that if users try and access Teams on the unsupported browser, it will display a message explaining the issue and the session limitations. The message also encourages the user to download and use the Teams desktop client or to upgrade to Microsoft Edge, which has been designed to offer “faster and more responsive web access to greater sets of features in everyday toolsets like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and more”.

In addition to losing Teams, Internet Explorer is also set to lose access to Microsoft 365. Support for the service on IE11 draws to a close on 17 August 2021, while the legacy version of Microsoft Edge will also reach end of support on 9 March next year.

These changes were announced in a blog post earlier this year. “We’re announcing that Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11) by this time next year,” the company said. “Beginning November 30 2020, the Microsoft Teams web app will no longer support IE 11. Beginning August 17 2021, the remaining Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support IE 11,” the firm said.

“This means that after the above dates, customers will have a degraded experience or will be unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE 11. For degraded experiences, new Microsoft 365 features will not be available or certain features may cease to work when accessing the app or service via IE 11.

“While we know this change will be difficult for some customers, we believe that customers will get the most out of Microsoft 365 when using the new Microsoft Edge. We are committed to helping make this transition as smooth as possible,” the company added.

The move comes as Microsoft attempts to standardise its online offering around Chromium-based browsers such as Edge and Google Chrome.