Microsoft Teams Copying Name, Timestamp, and Message

You speak from my heart! Thank you very much indeed!

The answer from Microsoft is not correct. When I select the text and copy it, it shoul copy only text. That is right. But I did not select the text, but whole message. Navigating by arrows to message and press Ctrl+C. It is right, that when I selected part of message, it was often copying whole message. That was bug. Now, Microsoft killed one bug by creating two more. If I select text, part of text is automatically deselected.
My opinion is allowing copy whole message by different key shortcut.

I just found another workaround that works better than the prior suggestions I have personally tried. This has frustrated me like others for a while. I have been using the workaround that is suggested in some of the Replies here to copy with CTRL-C while you are still holding the mouse button down to highlight the messages. That adds the sender and time stamp, but it also makes it mostly unreadable and puts the name and timestamp with a 5 or 6 word preview and THEN the entire message. The mess that gets pasted is virtually non-readable.

Specifically I have found the following works better than other existing options I have seen.

1. Open Teams and the Chat in Chrome (this will work in Edge or probably most other browsers too).
2. If you want the entire chat that is available, make sure to keep scrolling up until you hit the beginning of the chat to make sure the entire chat is loaded onto the screen (since both Teams desktop and the browser only render part of the chat unless and until you keep scrolling to get it to load more and more of the chat).
3. Use the browser's Save Page As function (In Chrome it is a menu item under the "Cast, Save and Share" menu item. Save it as the type Webpage, Single File. If you try to save it as Webpage, HTML Only you it renders as an Error Page. If you save it as Webpage, Complete you also may get an error page without all the details and even without the error will get way more than you need and it saves it as a "package" of interactive files.
4. Opens the saved Webpage. It opens like any other static webpage file and can be searched in the browser with Ctrl F. It is also rendered exactly as you saw it on the webpage as far as I can see EXCEPT that you can't see any attached/embedded images. You only see the image icon representing that there was an image there. However, the html does include a link to the image that works so long as you are logged into your original Teams environment where it is stored. You can right click on it and choose Open Image in a new tab and you can view it. Unfortunately, the Load Image command on the right click context menu doesn't work to lode it inline.
5. If you want to copy some or all of the messages into in another App like Word or an Email or OneNote (which is where I maintain some of my backup copies of chats). or (whatever), you can highlight and copy what you want from THIS saved webpage (rather than the live webpage). If you paste it with formatting it will paste it basically as you see it, with most of the formatting that you see, and most importantly with the Sender and Time stamps as you see them, IN A READABLE FORM!!!! As mentioned above, since you can't see embedded Images, it also does not copy embedded images to paste in another place.
   • If you want/need to include the image, unfortunately you would have to go Open that Image and copy and paste it separately or go copy it form the live version of the page.
   • It also does not paste any of the underlying link info that is embedded in the html encoding (at least not any way I have tried it with any Paste Special settings). You can use the context menu item "Copy Image Address" to get a link address to the actual image, but that address does not render as a link when you paste it just a shortened blob address that you can copy and paste into your browser to get the image. You can get a true link by hovering over the image and selecting the Inspect context menu item and you can copy and paste the full URL which should paste and function as a hyperlink.

I hope this workaround helps you or someone else who is frustrated find at least some solution that accomplishes their goals/meets their needs, short of Microsoft developing a workable solution.

Don't get me wrong, even this workaround is still a complete pain. Users should be able to either export or copy and paste the chats that are basically formatted and include the relevant sender and timestamp information way more easily than this. This is especially people using Teams as a primary communications forum in a business/enterprise context. It is insane and infuriating that it is this difficult to preserve information you may need to preserve. I would say it is incomprehensible that Microsoft either can't or refuses to solve this, except for the fact that it seems to be par for the course of their history and their MO for Microsoft to constantly implement App updates that diminish the use of their Apps, refuse to focus on functionality that users have told them is mission critical or very important, in favor of focusing on perceived "hip" updates like more emojis, modern looking UIs that are not functional, just pretty, etc. These community forums are ripe with evidence that Microsoft really does not have any interest in listening to its users and developing products with functional features based on how users need and want to use the products. So.... we are all left to be armchair developers coming up with workarounds. I know I am grateful for those that share their workarounds here.

Thank you Beth. I'd say that a screenshot tool is way more practical in my use case. However, in my business, which is a corporate business with lot of quick decisions to take and people to manage, not having this feature is so basic and I am so infuriated with Microsoft any time I update Teams and hope they restored this feature, and realize that they didn't.

Isn't there any, more public and visible, way of communicating this angst to Microsoft?

Dear Inema,

Just about your assumption above regarding a change on Microsoft's backend, I add you in the following the official message about this issue. (I got this info in another thread from me but unfortunately in German, like the whole thread.) But after a short research, I found at least a website from another IT pro, obviously with admin rights to the Microsoft message center. There it was the following message under the same label MC878422.

Microsoft Teams – new message center posts:
Teams copy/paste of messages does not include timestamp and message author name MC878422
Published Aug 30, 2024
"Many users have voiced frustrations over copying messages in Teams, particularly the inclusion of metadata like names and timestamps. Customer feedback has been clear, signaling that this feature was adding more noise than value to user workflow. We are rolling out the change that copied messages are only showing the message content moving forward.

• Streamlined Experience: Most users simply want to copy and paste messages without the extra clutter. Removing names and timestamps from copied content helps maintain focus and reduces unnecessary noise.
• Better Alternatives for Specific Needs: For those who need to forward messages or extract conversations, we recommend using the Forward feature for message transfer between chats, and the Teams Export API for conversation extraction. These tools are more robust and prevent manipulation of message content.

General Availability (Worldwide): Available now and we apologize for not communicating prior to the rollout occurring."

I didn't agree that 'most users simply want to copy and paste message...' in red above. I think the group of Customers who need timestamps/users urgently is much bigger than the others which have a mess with timestamps/users.

I've seen in many other threads and discussion forums that I'm not alone with my meaning... Many other people which need timestamps/users for their daily business, working in support business. And most of them mentioned a ticket system based on simple copy-paste export from Customers requests (like me).

It can also be that such a request is lasting several months, with dozens of chat messages, exchanging lots of technical explanations and documents. In this case, the timestamps/users is urgently needed to avoid a complete mess.

So, I discussed with the involved MSFT in my thread a little bit. Finally, I proposed to add a feature in Microsoft Teams to have as Customer the choice to activate/deactivate time stamps/users in a copy-paste export.

He agreed to forward my proposal internally ('Microsoft Product Team') and come back in this thread if there are some news about that.

Unfortunately and up to now, I didn't hear something that Microsoft will 'move' somehow. Like going back to the previous version incl. timestamps/users or implement an option to activate/deactivate this info by Customers etc.

Thank you very much for your attention and support.

Best Regards,
MarkusR (EXT)