Chat in Microsoft Teams meetings (2024)

Most Teams meetings includea chat where meeting participants can share info without disrupting the flow of the meeting.

Note:This feature may be disabled in your organization. Check with your IT admin for details.

View and send messages

In your meeting controls, a red dot on the Show conversation icon indicates that someone posted a message.

To view the message, select Show conversation .

The meeting chat window opens to the right of the main screen.

To send a message, compose it in the text box and then select Send .

You'll havethe same options as other chats in Teams, so you can format your text, send pictures and GIFs, use emojis, attach files, and so on. For details, see Chat help.

If you're part of the Teams public preview program, you'll see chats appear in the main meeting window, without navigating to theShow conversation icon.

Continue the conversation after the meeting

After the meeting, you can access the chat conversation in several ways:

Select Chat on the left side of Teams and choose the meeting in the chat list
Note that in the chat list, meeting chats are preceded by themeeting icon
and have the same title as the meeting.
Select Calendar on the left side of Teams, right-click the meeting event, and then select Chat with participants.
Or you can double-click the meeting event and select the Chat tab.
See Also
How to Use Companion Mode in Google Meet

The following types of meeting attendees with the necessary permissions can continue the conversation they began during the meeting (unless the organizer limited the chat to only during the meeting).

All meeting attendees of scheduled single instance meetings will continue to have post-meeting chat access.
All meeting attendees of scheduled recurring meetings who are included in the meeting invitation will have post-meeting chat access.

Notes:The following meetingattendees are the exceptionto the chat accessibility rule as stated above:

Attendees who are forwarded an occurrence of the series or those who get nudged into an occurrence of that series will lose post-meeting chat access.
All externalmeeting attendees (i.e.,meeting participants whoarefrom another non-federated tenant or anonymous users who are not managed by an organization) will not have chat access in both of the above cases.
If someone has been manually removed from the meeting chat or chooses to leave it, they won't have access to the chat going forward. (For more info, see Leave or remove someone from a group chat.)

Start the conversation before the meeting

You can also prep people for an upcoming meeting through a meeting chat (unless the organizer limited the chat).

Right-click the meeting event in your Teams calendar,select Chat with participants, and enter your message.

Note:People who were sent the meeting invitation have access to the meeting chat—before, after, and during the meeting—even if they don’t attend the meeting.

Chat in recurring meetings

For recurring meetings, the chat conversation continues from one meeting to the next. When participants open their chat window, they’ll have access to all the messages that were exchanged in the previous meetings.

Note:If a participant is removed from a recurring meeting series, thatparticipant will lose chat access.

Inviting someone to a single occurrence

People invited to one meeting ofa recurring meeting series can participate in the chat with other attendees. They won’t see chat history from previous meetings in the series, but they'll be able tosend and view chat messages during the meeting.

If you want to invite someone to join one of your recurring meetings but not the rest, make sure you forward the invite for the single instance,not the entire meeting series, to ensure chat privacy.

Tip:If you've invited an external participant to be a guest speaker and you want to further limit their access to the meeting chat, you can schedule their presentation as the meeting's last session. The meeting organizer or moderator can then monitor the participant list during the meeting, and if the speaker joins outside their allocated time, they can manually remove them.

Note:People you add to a meeting after it starts using the Invite someone box on the participant list have access to the chat from the time they are invited to the time the meeting ends.

Chat in channel meetings

For meetings that are held in a channel, all channel members can view and add to the chat conversation, whether they attend the meeting or not. The conversation will be available on the Posts tab of the channel, beneath the meeting title.

Note:People who are not members of the channel but are invited to a channel meeting won’t have access to the chat.

More info about chat access

If you're the organizer of a meeting, you can modify chat settings. Limit chats to take place only during the meeting, not before or after, or turn chat off altogether.
Up to1,000 peoplewho receive an invitation to a meeting can access the meeting chat during the meeting, while up to 750 people who receive an invitation to a meeting can access the meeting chat before and after the meeting. The 1,000-person in-meeting limit and 750-person pre and post-meeting limit include people who don’t join the meeting.
If you're adding a distribution list (DL) with more than 150 members to a meeting invite, they'll only be able to access the meeting chat during the meeting.If you want everyone to be able to access the chat before and after the meeting, expand the DL before you send the invite.

Note:If more than 20 peopleattendthe meeting, participants will not see the automated message informing them they've joined the chat.

If some people in the DL are required attendees and the rest are optional, put those requiredon the Required attendees line of the invite and add the entire DL to the Optional line.

Note:If adding a DL makes the chat exceed 1,000 people, you won't be able to add the list.
Anonymous and external participants have chat access only while attending the meeting (except in channel meetings, where they will have no access to chat).

Note:If people from federated or non-federated orgsare not invited to the meeting, they can't beadded directly to the meeting chatbefore, during, or after the meetingfor security reason. Adding these external participants to the meeting chatwill prompt the creation of a new group chat.

Want to know more?

Change participant settings for a Teams meeting