If Outlook shows a coloured dot beside somebody's name, treat it as an availability hint from Microsoft Teams — not proof that the person is free, reading email or ready to reply.
The safest way to read the icon is to open the person's contact card and check the text label. Microsoft uses the same symbol for more than one Teams state, and Outlook does not always reproduce the state exactly.
Here is the short answer.
| Symbol | Teams label | What it usually means | What it does not prove |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green circle with a check | Available | The person appears active and Teams has not applied a more restrictive state. | That their calendar is empty or they will reply immediately. |
| Solid red circle | Busy, In a call or In a meeting | The person is busy by choice, calendar state or current Teams activity. | Which of those three situations applies unless the contact card says so. |
| Red circle with a white line | Do not disturb, Presenting or Focusing | Interruptions are being limited, or Teams has detected a presentation or focus period. | That messages are blocked or rejected. |
| Yellow clock | Away or Be right back | Teams has detected inactivity, a locked device or a manually selected status. | That the person has left work for the day. |
| Grey circle with an X | Offline or Appear offline | The person is signed out on their devices, or has chosen to appear offline. | Whether the state is automatic or deliberately selected. |
| Open grey circle | Status unknown | Microsoft 365 cannot provide a reliable presence state in that context. | That the person is offline. |
| Purple circle with an arrow | Out of office | Automatic replies are active or a calendar event is set to show as out of office. | That the person is unavailable at every moment; out-of-office can appear alongside another state. |
The artwork can vary slightly between Outlook builds and between the message list, address field and contact card. The written status is more reliable than the colour alone.
Where the Outlook status comes from
Microsoft describes presence as part of a person's Teams profile that can appear throughout Microsoft 365.
Teams calculates an automatic state using several signals:
- activity on the person's most recently used device;
- whether Teams is in a call, meeting or presentation;
- relevant Outlook calendar information; and
- a status the person selected manually.
That explains several apparently contradictory icons.
A person may be green because they are active, yet still be concentrating on something. They may appear yellow because their computer is locked while they are using their phone. They can also set Appear offline, so a grey X is not proof that they have signed out.
Presence is useful context. It is not a delivery receipt, a read receipt, an identity check or a promise of a response.
The seven Outlook and Teams presence symbols
1. Available: green circle with a check
Available means Teams currently considers the person active and has not calculated a less-available state.
Do not translate green into “free now”. The person may be reading, writing or working in another app. Use the contact card and calendar information if you need to choose a time for a conversation.
2. Busy: solid red circle
The red busy symbol covers more than one state. Microsoft lists Busy, In a call and In a meeting separately, but they use the same solid-red icon.
Open the contact card if the distinction matters. The dot on its own cannot tell you whether the person manually selected Busy, joined a Teams call or is in a calendar meeting.
3. Do not disturb: red circle with a white line
The red circle with a white bar is used for Do not disturb. Microsoft also uses it for the app-calculated Presenting and Focusing states.
Teams still receives chat messages while somebody is in Do not disturb, but banner notifications are normally suppressed. That makes this a strong signal to avoid a casual interruption, not evidence that your message failed.
4. Away: yellow clock
The yellow clock represents Away or the manually selected Be right back state.
Teams can set Away after the desktop has been inactive for a few minutes or the computer is locked. On mobile, Teams can show Away when the app is in the background. That is why the icon can lag behind what the person is actually doing.
5. Offline: grey circle with an X
Teams shows Offline when the person is no longer signed in on a device. A user can also choose Appear offline, which uses the same icon.
You cannot distinguish those two cases from the icon. You can still send an email or Teams message; the symbol does not block delivery.
6. Status unknown: open grey circle
Status unknown means the client does not have a reliable state to show.
It can be caused by a presence-service or network issue, a Skype for Business coexistence scenario, or the context in which Outlook is trying to identify the person. It should never be interpreted as “definitely offline”.
Microsoft also lists an important Outlook limitation: federated external Teams contacts currently appear as Status unknown in Outlook.
7. Out of office: purple circle with an arrow
Teams derives Out of office from automatic replies or a calendar event whose availability is set to Out of Office.
It can be combined with another state. Somebody who has automatic replies enabled but briefly opens Teams may show an availability icon together with the out-of-office indicator.
Microsoft documents another Outlook limitation here: an Outlook out-of-office icon can disagree with Teams, with Outlook sometimes showing Away or Offline while Teams shows Out of Office.
What if the address belongs to somebody outside your organisation?
This is where the icon is easiest to over-read.
Seeing an icon beside an external address does not confirm a secure B2B Direct Connect relationship, a guest account or a trusted partner configuration. It is not a security badge.
Microsoft's current documentation says two things that matter:
- Outlook presence support is documented for contacts in the same organisation.
- Outlook currently shows Status unknown for federated external Teams contacts.
Teams administrators can use external access settings to control meetings, chat and presence with other organisations. Teams also has a tenant-wide privacy mode that prevents presence being shared outside the organisation.
Those are collaboration and privacy controls, not cosmetic icon settings. Do not loosen an external-access policy merely to make a coloured dot appear in Outlook.
If you need to contact somebody outside your tenant, open their contact card or search for them in Teams, which may provide more context than Outlook. Even then, treat presence as a temporary signal rather than proof of identity or trust.
Why Outlook and Teams sometimes disagree
The two apps can show different states without either display being a useful indicator of what the person is doing at that second.
Common reasons include:
- Outlook has not refreshed the state yet;
- the person has Teams open on more than one device;
- their most recently active device changed;
- a manual Teams status is still in effect;
- Outlook and Teams resolved different addresses for the contact;
- out-of-office information is being rendered differently; or
- the contact is external and Outlook returns Status unknown.
Microsoft says the most recently active device determines presence when a person is signed into Teams on several devices. This is why an icon can change after they switch between a Mac and a phone.
Safe troubleshooting in Outlook for Mac
Microsoft's detailed Outlook presence repair article is mainly written for classic Outlook on Windows. Its registry and Windows type-library instructions do not apply to macOS.
Use this smaller diagnostic sequence on a Mac:
- Open the contact card. Record the exact label, rather than diagnosing the colour from memory.
- Check the same person in Teams. This separates a Teams presence problem from an Outlook display problem.
- Check the scope. Is one internal contact affected, every internal contact, or only external contacts?
- Make sure Teams is installed and running. Microsoft says Outlook presence depends on Teams being installed, running and configured to provide presence.
- Check the address. The person's email address and Teams sign-in address need to match for Outlook to resolve the contact reliably.
- Restart Teams and Outlook. If the state was stale, this is a low-risk way to force both clients to reconnect. Install current Microsoft 365 updates if either app is behind.
- Stop if only external contacts are unknown. That matches Microsoft's documented Outlook limitation; reinstalling apps or changing federation settings may not fix it.
Do not copy Windows registry fixes into Terminal, force-quit vaguely named Microsoft background processes or install a display utility to fix a presence-data problem. None of those actions establishes why the status is wrong.
When an administrator should investigate
Escalate the issue when presence is wrong for internal colleagues in both Outlook and Teams, or when many users are affected at the same time.
Microsoft's Teams troubleshooting guidance asks administrators to check whether the affected contact is signed in, whether they selected Appear offline, and whether the required Teams network endpoints are reachable.
If support is needed, capture:
- the Teams sign-in address of the person seeing the problem;
- the sign-in address of the contact whose state is wrong;
- the UTC time at which the problem was reproduced;
- whether it also occurs in Teams on the web; and
- desktop and web logs from both people, where possible.
That evidence is far more useful than “the dot was the wrong colour”.
Frequently asked questions
Does a green Teams dot mean somebody is free?
No. It means Teams currently shows them as Available. It does not prove their calendar is empty, that they are reading Outlook or that they can reply immediately.
Why is an external contact shown as Status unknown in Outlook?
Microsoft documents this as a current Outlook limitation for federated external Teams contacts. Check the contact in Teams if you need more context, but do not treat a missing state as a federation failure.
Can I tell whether somebody selected Appear offline?
No. The manually selected Appear offline state and the automatic Offline state use the same grey-circle-with-X symbol.
Why does Outlook show Away while Teams shows Out of Office?
Microsoft lists mismatched out-of-office presence between Outlook and Teams as a known issue. Automatic replies and calendar state can contribute to the Teams out-of-office indicator even when Outlook renders another state.
Can an administrator hide presence from external organisations?
Yes. External access settings determine which external organisations can collaborate and share presence, and Teams has a tenant-wide privacy mode that prevents external presence sharing. These settings affect wider collaboration, so they should be changed as a security and governance decision — not simply to alter an Outlook icon.
The practical rule
Use a presence icon to choose how you approach somebody, not whether you are allowed to approach them.
Green suggests a live Teams conversation may be reasonable. Red or Do not disturb suggests email may be kinder. Yellow, grey or unknown means you should not assume an immediate response.
If you look after Outlook, Teams and the policies behind them, join the SharePoint & Teams Admins Space for current, human-audited Microsoft 365 guidance.