Most people put more thought into their LinkedIn photo than the one attached to their work account, and then wonder why they’re hard to pick out of a Teams meeting grid or an email thread. Your Microsoft 365 profile picture shows up everywhere: Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, the global address list. Set it once and it follows you across all of them.

That matters more than it sounds like it should, especially for organisations with hybrid or remote teams, where a video call or a photo might be the only version of a colleague someone in another office ever sees. A blank grey silhouette, or worse, someone’s photo from a role they left five years ago, does the opposite of what a profile picture is meant to do.

Updating your photo in Microsoft 365

The photo is managed centrally through your Microsoft 365 account rather than separately in each app, so updating it once should update it everywhere.

  1. Go to your Microsoft 365 account settings (from office.com, select your account icon in the top right, then “My account” or “View account”).
  2. Look for the option to change your profile photo, usually shown as your current picture or a camera icon over it.
  3. Select it, then choose to upload a new photo from your files.
  4. Confirm and save the change.

Depending on which app you’re in when you update it, Outlook and Teams may take a few minutes to catch up. If a colleague still sees your old photo immediately after you’ve changed it, that’s normal. Give it a bit of time, or ask them to refresh the app.

What actually makes a good one

A recent, reasonably well-lit headshot where you’re recognisable is the bar. It doesn’t need to be a professional photography session. It does need to look like you, taken sometime in the last couple of years, ideally with your face clearly visible rather than half in shadow or wearing sunglasses.

If your organisation runs a lot of video calls or has people working across multiple sites, this is a five-minute task worth doing for everyone, not just the people who think to do it themselves. It’s a small thing, but it’s one of the easiest ways to make a distributed team feel less like a directory of names and more like a group of people who know who they’re talking to.