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Looking for help with a particular issue with searching for older messages inside of Teams.
When I search for a certain keyword - say, "hot dog" - I get results that are both old and recent from past conversations. If I look at the recent results I get the full message context that surrounds it - messages coming and going.
If I read older messages, however, I only get the single message result without any surrounding context. This is only marginally helpful, as the context is necessary to add, well, context to the conversation!
Has anyone figured out how to do this? Is it an admin side thing that needs to change?
Finding specific messages or threads using search tools within Microsoft Teams chat history
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I have tried the proposed solution from @jengibson2, but did not help me.
BUT WHAT WORKS PERFECTLY is when you open the web version of TEAMS https://teams.microsoft.com/ where you can search for keywords and it displays all the history around.
Another workaround - not ideal, but works...
Search as normal for content you are seeking. Note the date of occurrence. Now in the search bar, enter, "Sent:<date>" where <date> is the date you noted. The entire day's conversations will appear in the results pane, generally in inverse order as normal.
Again, not ideal, but works.
Hi Andygoes,
Thanks for your post in our forum. When searching for an old message in Teams, we can only click to check the details about this specific chat message, but unfortunately, it is not feasible to show the chat history related to the specific search result.
Best regards,
Jennifer
Jennifer, you must recognise how awful this design decision is.
An example from two minutes ago, my colleague wanted to know where in a json data structure the timeout value should go. I knew I'd spoken about this before and searched "timeout". I found the exact conversation I wanted:
"do you know where to set an increased timeout for the generator?"
BUT! There's no context around that question for me to find the answer! Even more infuriating is that there are four other messages that mention "timeout" from the exact same conversation (all within a few minutes), but none of the intervening context that tells me what I want to know!
It's completely rubbish.
I've voted on this submission:
It wouldn't just be more of a convenience to be able to see context around search results. I consider it completely broken based on the fact it doesn't. This is exactly why we pushed for Slack. I don't understand how a multibillion dollar company can so consistently generate products that cannot compete with what a couple of developers are making in their garage.
As soon as I started using Microsoft teams I was taken aback by the clunky user interface which looks like someone looked at slack and said "that but much worse". Then they decide to take a jackhammer to the search function after already having a solution which allowed users to see context.
This is statement is false:
it is not feasible to show the chat history related to the specific search result
How do I know it is false? Because it wasn't like this a few weeks ago. And Microsoft is pretty much the only company which creates chat products that behave in this manner. Also, its pretty intuitively false, because if I went to go create a chat application right now, I guarantee you it would provide context on search results.. Now it may be marginally cheaper to not provide context.. so you can just say that.
I found a workaround.. Have someone that is in the same chat group search the term you're looking for and like it. This gives you an activity notification and if you click the activity it brings you to the message with the previous and ensuing messages in context. It took a bit to load, but I was able to find the answer, and not just the question, to what I was looking for.
That being said, Microsoft should fix this so you can search beyond 90 days and see the message within the context as well. Seems pretty basic.