Here’s a question from Mick:
So far we used Skype for chat and group collaboration, but now transitioning to Microsoft Teams is in full swing. One difficulty i encountered when using the Teams app on Windows and web was to find specific conversations in the Chat app. I am sure that i have chatted with specific people but i can’t find the conversation in the Chat recent conversation list. What am i doing wrong here? Any advice on how i can unhide and recover the missing chats?
Thanks for your question. Here we go with our short answer.
Show hidden chat history in Teams
If you can’t find specific conversations in your Teams Chat app, kindly proceed as following.
Step 1: Filter your visible chats
If you have a long list of chat conversations in your Teams chat list, it could be that the specific conversation you are looking for is not hidden, but it is simply not showing up in your screen as it is way down in your chat list. If that’s the case, you can simply scroll down through your chats or use the filter function as shown below
- Open Teams and using your left hand side bar, hit the Chat app.
- Press CTRL+Shift+F or hit the funnel icon to filter the chat list by name.
- Then in the Filter by name section, simply enter the name of the person you are looking for.
- Then hit the More Options button next to the person.
- If the Unhide option is visible, it means that your chat is hidden. Simply click on Unhide to make the conversation available in your Chats list.
- Alternatively, if the Hide option is available, the the chat is not hidden, and you can consider clicking on the Pin option to ensure it’s always available at the top of your conversation list.
Step 2: Use the Search bar to find hidden chats
- Open the Teams Chat App
- In the Teams Search bar type the name the colleague you have chatted with.
- If the chat was hidden, hit the link to unhide it as shown below:
- If you want to have the chat visible in the chat list, simply hit the More options (…) icon and hit Unhide. As mentioned above, you can pin the specific chat conversation to your list so it’s always accessible (using the Pin option).
Show Recent Chats in Teams
A colleague asked me for the best way to access the recent chats in Teams.
The Microsoft Teams recent chats can be accessed from the Chat tab in Teams. They are grouped together an labeled Recent Chats (as shown below).
If you are just starting out with teams, look into our top 40 Teams trips and tricks tutorial.