Teams chat

Teams chat can be used in group work or quick messaging when you want to sort something out one-on-one with another person. The chat function rather than email is recommended for quick messaging.

You find Chat in the left edge of Teams. From there, you can start a chat with one or more people by clicking on the New chat icon at the top, or continue an old chat which you can search for from the search box. There is a discussion board as well as call and video conferencing functions for chatting. Your chat history is saved.

If you do not want a chat to be seen in the discussion board on the left, you can hide it. Tap the three dots next to the conversation shortcut and select Hide from the menu that opens. Behind the three dots, you will also find a Pin function that allows you to pin frequently visited conversations to the top of the list.

You can detach a conversation into its own window by double-clicking on the pop-up icon (top right) or on the desired chat in the list of conversations on the left. The pop-up icon will also appear when you hover your mouse over the chat icon.

Tips for smoother communication

Favour threads in your chats, i.e., reply to a conversation that has already started with the Reply command. Otherwise, you will start a new chat, and this will break up the conversation thread into several parts.

When you hover your mouse over an incoming message, you can comment it, for example, with an emoji, or reply to the message directly with Reply. In your own message, you can, for example, edit the message you have sent or delete it completely from behind the three dots. You may also save the message or mark it as unread if you want to return to the message later. You can find your saved messages behind your profile picture in Saved.

At the bottom the text field, there are several functions with which you can spice up your messages. 

• Text editing features can be found under the A icon. Giving a title to your chat is a good way to improve the findability of the conversation when you wish to return to a topic via search. 
• You may also tag your message as important or urgent from under the exclamation mark. 
• The menu also contains the Loop function with which you can write with your discussion partner in real-time and add tables, bulleted lists, etc.
• The Praise function opens via the medal, with which you can, for example, congratulate a colleague for a job well done! 
   

Digital toolkit:
Chatting and video calls in Teams
Manage notifications in Teams


Microsoft support:
Basic functions in chat
Send and read
Group chats
Find and filter

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