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Show context around old Teams messages from search results

Anonymous
2020-09-29T18:45:59+00:00

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?

Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams for business | Chats | Search messages and conversations

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-03-03T17:09:42+00:00

    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.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-12-18T14:51:01+00:00

    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:

    https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/38340526-make-search-return-messages-in-context-of-the-conv

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-04-09T08:46:06+00:00

    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.

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-04-09T09:09:33+00:00

    What solved this issue for me was to scroll back in every single chat from "now" to the beginning. To simplify this I used a little tool made with AutoIt that repeatedly sends the PgUp-key. In some chats it still takes like forever. However, once this is done the search keeps on showing the context. But if by whatever reason you log out of Teams you have to do this again once you log back in.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-09-30T04:37:32+00:00

    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. 

    I can understand to have the ability to see related chat history will be more convenience when searching in Teams. To help us continuously improve your experience with our products, we will be very grateful if you could submit your feedback and feature request in the Teams UserVoice forum.

    We appreciate your valuable comments. Thanks for your time and efforts.

    Best regards,

    Jennifer

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