This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
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.
@Richard Vicary
Spot on. Not the fastest or easiest, but provides exactly what so many people are looking for.
Thank you so much for sharing.
I have found a similar workaround that doesn't involve a colleague. Hover over the search result you do find and click "..." then "Pin". Now go to the conversation, and click on the pinned message at the top of the chat. You will be taken to the full conversation surrounding the individual message you found.
This is great! This certainly is the best workaround I have seen. I can't believe this works, but I tried it and it does.
And if this works this means MS Teams has all the data in question, why wouldn't they make it easier in exposing?
MS Team crew: Wake-up please, this needs to be fixed, it's a huge design flaw in teams.
The only downside to this approach is that it PINs the message for everyone in that chat. It could be a large crowd of people there and may wonder why you pinned it. It also records that you pinned something, and records that you unpinned something when you are done. Still, not a deal breaker, and still certainly the best method to locate messages with context.
OMG! You are a genius!
I have found a similar workaround that doesn't involve a colleague. Hover over the search result you do find and click "..." then "Pin". Now go to the conversation, and click on the pinned message at the top of the chat. You will be taken to the full conversation surrounding the individual message you found.
In addition to the list Nick A finished with, the code block is wrong now when it was fine (fencing inline, markdown style), reply to a message is not threaded properly in all conversation types, I cant reply to one part of a message (like GitHub), can't export conversations, can't find conversations unless I know all of the participants, can't pin more than 15 chats, no whiteboard support for chats or outlook scheduled meetings, no way to breakout a topic into another conversation or join conversations, etc.
It's clear that they aren't considering the mechanical aspects of communication and conversation.