Microsoft Teams in Office 365 is a meeting tool-of-choice for many organizations and remote teams. It doesn’t matter if you are working remotely. As long as you have a working internet connection, you will be connected with all your teammates on Microsoft Office and working together would be as harmonized as working from the office.

Microsoft Teams has a lot of wonderful features which makes it the ideal collaboration tool for teams. One of the features is the ease with which you can have meetings with your team. The gallery view of everyone’s video feeds makes having meetings on Teams a breezy experience.

Enable Large Gallery View to see up to 49 people

Microsoft Teams now has a new view known as the Large Gallery View that supports a 7 x 7 grid layout, i.e., you can see up to 49 participants in a meeting.

But the Large Gallery View is not on by default, unlike its predecessor, the 3 x 3 layout. As 49 active video streams at the same time can be a bit taxing on the system and the internet, it looks like the right call. Users can enable it based on their preferences.

Enabling the large gallery view in a meeting is a piece of cake. When there are more than 10 people in the meeting, the option will become available. Until you enable it, you’ll see the last active 9 speakers in a 3 x 3 grid.

To enable the large gallery view, click on the ‘More actions’ icon (three dots) on the meeting toolbar and select ‘Large Gallery’ from the menu.

The Large Gallery View has just started rolling out and will not be available fully until August.

Can’t find the “Large gallery” option? Check out our guide on How to Enable Large Gallery View in Microsoft Teams.

Video stream of up to 9 people in a 3 x 3 Grid

Microsoft has default support for a 3 x 3 layout that can show up to 9 video feeds at a time.

You don’t need to do anything to enable a 3 x 3 grid (9 person view) in Microsoft Teams. If a meeting has nine or more participants, Teams will automatically show a grid of 3 x 3 so you see everyone in the meeting.

Microsoft hasn’t confirmed if 3 x 3 view is coming to Teams mobile apps as well. We’ll have to wait and see.

Some users have run into troubles with the Gallery View of feeds that make the meetings insufferable. But there are easy ways to fix this problem.

Switch to the Teams Desktop App

If you have been using Microsoft Teams web app, well, then there’s your culprit. Teams web app may not show the gallery view for video meetings sometimes. In a meeting with more than 2 people, the video for the person currently speaking or whoever spoke last may be the only feed visible, and the video for the rest of the members is not.

The rest of the participants of the meeting are indicated at the bottom of the screen without their videos in the web app.

Video for only one member is shown at a time on the web app. The rest of the participants are indicated at the bottom of the screen.

To make the problem go away, download and install the desktop client for Microsoft Teams. The gallery view of up to 9 participants in a 3 x 3 grid (new feature, previously only 4 participants would be viewable) is visible at a time in the desktop app for Microsoft Teams.

Can’t See all Participants Even on Teams Desktop App?

Already using the Microsoft Teams desktop app but still facing the same problem? The video for only one person is visible on the screen and the rest of the feeds are either not visible, or visible as small screens at the bottom.

Then it’s possible that you may have accidentally pinned someone’s feed to the screen and that is the reason behind this whole fiasco.

Unpin the feed and the Gallery View for the video feeds should return. To unpin the feed, go to the lower-left corner of the feed pinned. There would be a ‘Pin’ symbol next to the name of the person. Click on it and it will be unpinned and the view will return to normal.

A video feed is pinned to the screen, and the rest of the videos are available as small screens at the bottom of the screen. Unpin the pinned video to return to the Gallery View.

Note: If the problem still persists, then be patient. A lot of users are facing this problem due to the high demand for the app in these COVID-19 times. To reduce strain on the app, the video for the person currently speaking or who spoke last is the only one visible on the app.

If you can’t see everyone in a meeting in Microsoft Teams, then switching to the Desktop app for Teams is the better solution. It is also highly likely that you may be facing this problem due to the current high usage of the app; if that’s the case, being patient is the only way.