The announcement that Microsoft will shut down Skype in May 2025 caused a bit of a panic amongst a lot of people. In some industries Skype is still used as the primary communication tool for b2b communication.
In my Skype account, which I use daily, I have over 50 contacts who are logged in an active. Convincing them all to migrate to something else (Whatsapp? Signal?) is not how I want to spend my next two months.
Luckily, there is an easy way to fix this. Daniel Stanton posted about it on LinkedIn.
Here is Daniels short and quick version:
And below is a longer more detailed version.
How to move your contacts AND chat history from Skype to Microsoft Teams
You need to do these first steps on Desktop. So start by downloading Microsoft Teams for Desktop.
Log in using your Skype account.
If you already have Microsoft Teams installed you might have logged in using a different Microsoft account. So log out from that account and log in using your Skype account.
At first, it will be empty, no contacts.
Click the top right corner, and then click settings.
You first need to join the “Insiders Program”. This will enable beta features. Syncing from Skype is one of those beta features.
Click the “Teams Insider Program” link in the menu and then click “Join”.
It will ask to be restarted. Click “Restart”.
Now we need to tell it to sync the Skype contacts.
Go to settings again.
Click “People” in the left menu.
Click “Manage” under “Sync Contacts”
Click the Sync button next to the Skype option.
It should look like this when it’s done.
And that’s it! You are now done.
Celebrate by sharing this blog post with all your Skype contacts so they can do the same thing.
Or keep on reading for some more bonus tips.
Bonus Tips 1: How to migrate on mobile.
You first need to do these steps above on Desktop. After that;
You should now have all contacts and chat history migrated.
- Install the mobile app.
- Sign in using the same Skype account.
- Go to settings
- Join the “Teams Insider Program” (yes, you need to do this on every device).
Congratulations! You now have the contacts and chats synced – even on mobile.
Bonus Tips 2: You might get asked to be “Help Others Connect to you” – click Allow.
This is not mandatory to sync contacts, but you want people to be able to find you.
Bonus Tips 3: Chats are migrated – but not file transfers
It’s really cool that it migrates the chats. That’s very useful if you can’t remember what you spoke about last. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to migrate sent files (which it’s understandable).
So if you shared a lot of screenshots with your contacts your new chat will look like this.
Don’t worry about that. You shouldn’t be using Skype as a file repository anyway.
Bonus Tips 4: Make sure you are logged in on the right account
When I first tried to migrate my Skype contacts to teams it didn’t work. The problem was that I was logged in on the wrong Microsoft account. I’ve had Skype since 2003 (yes, I’m that old) and I’ve had a “Microsoft account” since 2011. When I first fired up Teams it automatically logged me in to my Microsoft Account (since that’s the account I’m using with Microsoft Office).
I had to log out and then log in to my Skype account to make it work.l
When you sign out, Teams will tell you that you can use multiple accounts at the same time.
But this seems to be a lie – because when you try it Teams tell you that it doesn’t support it.
Bonus Tips 5: Make sure your contacts do the same thing.
Share this article with your Skype connections. Make sure you do it before May 2025.
Bonus Tips 6: Follow Daniel on LinkedIn.
Follow Daniel Stanton on LinkedIn, he might post more useful stuff. Or check out his website – especially if you are in the iGaming business.
