Change Profile Picture Microsoft Outlook

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Original KB number: 3062745

  • Change your profile photo At the top of the page, select your name or profile picture In the My account pane, select your profile picture. In the Change your photo dialog, select Upload a new photo.
  • The Mac version of Outlook doesn't show your profile picture anywhere, and doesn't let you change it. Here's how to add a profile picture to Microsoft Outlook. Check out the products mentioned in.
  • If you are not sure which version of Outlook you are using, see What version of Outlook do I have? To change your profile photo: In Outlook, click File to see your Account Information page. Click the Change link under your current photo.

After choosing a photo to use, click Apply; Select Done. To recap the steps: Update your Profile Photo in Outlook. Find a little circle at the top of the page. That’s where your photo is supposed to be, select it. A list of options will appear, hover over the profile photo where you will see a camera icon. Click on it; Select +Upload a new photo. Update your profile photo in Teams. Open the Teams app. Click your initials or current photo. Click Change picture. Click Upload picture. Locate the picture you want to use, and click Open. NOTE: Your profile picture will display throughout Microsoft 365. It may take a few hours for your photo to display in all Microsoft 365 apps.

Symptoms

You have a hybrid deployment of on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server and Exchange Online in Microsoft 365. When you change a Microsoft 365 user's photo by accessing that user's on-premises information, the change isn't synced to Exchange Online. For example, when the user views the photo in Outlook, Outlook on the web (formerly known as Outlook Web App), or Skype for Business Online, the user's previous Exchange Online profile photo is still displayed.

Cause

Although the thumbnailPhoto attribute is synced from the on-premises environment to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), the following things could cause this problem.

Note

Microsoft

The thumbnailPhoto attribute can store a user photo as large as 100 kilobytes (KB).

  • The thumbnailPhoto attribute is synced only one time between Azure AD and Exchange Online. Any later changes to the attribute from the on-premises environment are not synced to the Exchange Online mailbox.
  • Exchange Online accepts only a photo that's no larger than 10 KB from Azure AD.

Resolution

Outlook

Use the Set-UserPhoto cmdlet or Outlook on the web to change the user's photo. These methods enable you to upload a photo that's as large as 500 KB.

Use the Set-UserPhoto cmdlet (for admins)

To use the Set-UserPhoto cmdlet to change a user's photo, follow these steps:

  1. Connect to Exchange Online by using remote PowerShell. To do this, follow these steps:

    Important

    To use the Set-UserPhoto cmdlet to its full size capabilities, you have to change the connection URI by appending ?proxyMethod=RPS to the ConnectionUri parameter.

    For more information, see Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.

  2. Run the Set-UserPhoto command to change the user photo.

Change Profile Picture Microsoft Outlook Account

Use Outlook on the web

For more information about how to change a user photo in Outlook on the web, see Update my photo and account information in Outlook Web App.

More information

Admins can use the Set-UserPhoto cmdlet to change their own photo without having to change the ConnectionUri parameter. However, to change another user's photo, admins must first change the ConnectionUri parameter. If the parameter isn't changed, admins receive the following error message when they use the cmdlet to change a user's photo:

Request return error with following error message:
The remote server returned an error: (413) Request Entity Too Large...
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-UserPhoto], CmdletProxyException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.CmdletProxyException,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.SetUserPhoto
+ PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com

Change Profile Picture Microsoft Outlook

References

For more information, see User contact photos in Lync aren't displayed correctly.

Still need help? Go to Microsoft Community or the Exchange TechNet Forums.

Austin Ryan is a Marketing Analyst at ThreeWill. Austin is certified in Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Hootsuite Social Media, and has experience SEO optimizing WordPress websites. He also creates and packages content for the website and ThreeWill’s social media channels including podcast post production.

A Way to Keep Your Company’s Brand Consistent

As a marketer, I try to do various things to keep the brand of my company consistent. This could be making sure our website is following our style guide or creating marketing material that at first glance looks like it’s from ThreeWill. Most recently, I began a project of retaking profile photos to have them current and branded properly. To complete this, I decided to go ahead and change every employee’s photo for them within Microsoft 365, in an effort to regulate the process to make sure it gets done correctly.

As the one doing the uploading, I could make sure that the images were to the right dimensions, cropped correctly, etc. The only problem I had was that as a marketer, I don’t have the correct permission to change these for other employees.

In comes Pete Skelly. Pete is the VP of Technology. If you don’t have permission as an administrator for Exchange Online, then reach out to your VP of Technology. In my case, I got permission to have the credentials of an admin for 24 hours. Just enough time to complete my task.

The Process of Changing Employee Profile Photos in Microsoft 365

Profile

ThreeWill doesn’t have hundreds of employees, so I didn’t need to do a bulk upload. If you need to do this, check out this resource from CodeTwo: CodeTwo Active Directory Photos.This bulk upload runs a Powershell script for you and allows you to do certain things like downsize photos to 4mb (the size that MS suggests), and upload thousands of photos and have them match up with users (through a naming convention).

If you don’t have thousands of employees and are fine with doing this one-by-one, then follow these instructions:

  1. Find/take the photos and save them on your computer. The photo needs to be smaller than 4 MB and can be a .png, jpg, or .gif file.
  2. Get admin credentials to Exchange Server.
  3. Go to Microsoft 365 admin center, and then open the Exchange admin center.
  4. Click on your profile photo, and then choose Another user.
  5. Select the user you want to update, and then choose OK.
  6. Under Account, choose Edit information.
  7. Click Change on the profile photo.
  8. Browse to the photo you want to upload, select it, and then choose Save at the bottom of the page.

After updating, you should see the photos in multiple places. These include: Outlook, OWA, SharePoint, Skype for Business, OneDrive, Planner, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Teams meetings.

Locking out Users from Changing their Photos

If you are concerned with users changing their profile photos to something else after, you can also lock that option for them. To restrict the permission, as an administrator, follow the instructions on this page: Locking photos or restricting permissions to change Microsoft 365 profile photo.

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