Hi everyone
As we know, Microsoft is retiring Skype for Business next year from the suite of Office 365 applications.
We haven’t found a way to uninstall Skype for Business unless you either Modify the installed O365 package (option to Modify isn’t always available, depending on how you installed it initially), or you completely uninstall the entire suite of Office 365 apps, and reinstall it without Skype for Business (which is a royal pain in the ***!).
I’ve opted to do 3 things
- Stop the Skype for Business auto-start process (this is a registry setting). You can read about it here https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_sfb-mso_winother-mso_o365b/stop-skype-for-business-from-starting/44c65b0a-a2b3-4d65-877c-70bfd2adb052.
- I found out later on Windows 10 that there is a catch to this. You also need to terminate the Skype process otherwise this won’t work. The settings are ignored. Hence do a “Stop-Process lync” to achieve this. You can read about it here https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/skype/forum/all/how-to-uninstall-skype-for-business-completely/6ccf61a0-e163-4b01-a163-f6e15a324d28?page=2
- Here’s the clincher: to “remove” Skype for Business app from the computer, just hide the LNK files from the Start menu. And voila, the user is none the wiser. 🙂