Microsoft Teams Link Preview Not Working? 5 Common Fixes

How Microsoft Teams generates link previews

When you paste a URL into a Teams message, Teams' bot service fetches the page and reads its Open Graph meta tags. If it finds og:title, og:description, and og:image, it renders a link card. If any of these are missing or unreachable, Teams shows no preview or a plain URL.

Fix 1: Add the required OG tags

Teams requires these three OG tags at minimum to render a preview:

<meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Your page description." />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/og.jpg" />

Also include og:url to help Teams identify the canonical URL for deduplication.

Fix 2: Ensure the URL uses HTTPS

Microsoft Teams only fetches previews for HTTPS URLs. HTTP links will not generate preview cards. If your site still serves some content over HTTP, set up a redirect to HTTPS and ensure your SSL certificate is valid.

Also verify that your SSL certificate is from a trusted CA — self-signed certificates will cause Teams' scraper to fail silently.

Fix 3: Unblock Microsoft's scraper

Teams uses Microsoft's bot service to fetch pages. Check that your server or CDN isn't blocking the Microsoft bot user agent. The Teams scraper uses a user agent string containing Microsoft or SkypeUriPreview:

# robots.txt — ensure Microsoft bots are NOT disallowed
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

# Do NOT block:
# User-agent: SkypeUriPreview
# Disallow: /

If you use a WAF (Cloudflare, AWS WAF), check if bot-blocking rules are catching Microsoft's scraper. Allowlist the Microsoft IP ranges if needed.

Fix 4: Check your Teams admin policy

Microsoft Teams has admin-configurable policies that can disable link previews organization-wide or for specific channels. If you're on a corporate Teams instance:

1. Ask your IT admin to check Messaging Policies in the Teams Admin Center
2. Look for "URL previews" or "Link previews" toggle under Messaging Policy settings
3. Ensure URL previews are enabled for your user or group

Fix 5: Check the og:image size and format

Teams has specific requirements for OG images:

• Minimum: 200×200 px
• Recommended: 1200×630 px (16:9 or similar aspect ratio)
• Format: JPEG or PNG (WebP may not render)
• Maximum file size: ~5 MB
• URL must be publicly accessible (no auth, no Cloudflare challenge pages)

Test whether Teams can fetch your image by pasting the image URL directly into a Teams message. If it shows inline, the image is accessible.

Clearing Teams link preview cache

Teams caches link previews. After fixing your OG tags, the cache may need to clear naturally (typically within a few hours to a day). You can also try:

• Pasting the URL in a private/incognito Teams window
• Adding a query parameter to bust the cache: ?v=2
• Clearing the Teams app cache (desktop app only)