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Copy/Paste list of names to create group chat in Teams

Anonymous
2023-06-22T19:18:36+00:00

I have tried to create a group chat that has 120 members (i.e. everybody on the 10th floor).

In Outlook, if I want to email those 120 people, I can copy and paste the list of email addresses which Outlook will convert to their Active Directory identities (using CTRL+K jumpstarts this process).

In Teams, if I paste a list of 120 email addresses in the "To:" field, Teams thinks I am looking for a single identity and gives a status message "We couldn't find any matches." It doesn't matter if the email addresses are separated by a space, comma or semi-colon -- teams doesn't recognize multiple email addresses.

It appears to add many names/email addresses to a Teams chat, you need to enter those names in one at a time. Unless I am missing something and someone has a work-around.

It would be nice if Microsoft Application functionality worked consistently between applications.

Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams for business | Chats | Group chats

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-06-23T19:20:16+00:00

    You’re welcome.

    I understand your frustration with the inconsistency between Outlook and Teams. Unfortunately, Teams does not support the same functionality as Outlook for creating group chats with multiple email addresses at once. This is a limitation of the Teams app that many users have reported and requested to be improved.

    As a workaround, you can try to create a contact group in Outlook with the email addresses of the people you want to chat with, and then use that group name in the Teams “To:” field. This way, you only have to enter one name instead of 120.

    Alternatively, you can create a team or a channel in Teams for the people on the 10th floor, and then use the @mention feature to notify them of your messages. This may be more convenient than creating a group chat, as you can also share files, apps, and other resources with your team or channel members.

    I hope these suggestions are helpful for you.

    Thank you and have a great day!

    3 people found this answer helpful.
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  1. Anonymous
    2023-08-03T08:56:07+00:00

    In case this helps anyone else if you are a little bit technically minded you can do this. You have to craft a URL like this

    https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=[comma separated list of email addresses]&topicName=[name of group]

    Replace

    [comma separated list of email addresses] with your list of email addresses, each one separated by a comma

    [name of group] with the name you want for the group chat

    Then paste the URL into your web browser address bar.

    I just created a group like this with 30 people - done in seconds.

    I believe the limit for a group chat is 50 people.

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2023-10-19T19:37:44+00:00

    When I need to do this, I create a meeting invite with all the people in it, make it 1 minute, Free, in the past, No responses requested. I then go into the Teams calendar and Chat with Participants. Voila! I hope you find this helpful.

    6 people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2023-08-31T06:27:23+00:00

    That's really odd - so you ended up with a link similar to this?

    https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=@email.com,@email.com&topicName=Test

    So in the above users to add are ******@email.com and ******@email.com separated by a comma. Make sure you have no spaces or other characters in the URL, particularly in the list of users.

    If I paste a URL like that into Edge it works every time for me.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2023-08-30T20:15:51+00:00

    In case this helps anyone else if you are a little bit technically minded you can do this. You have to craft a URL like this

    https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=[comma separated list of email addresses]&topicName=[name of group]

    Replace

    [comma separated list of email addresses] with your list of email addresses, each one separated by a comma

    [name of group] with the name you want for the group chat

    Then paste the URL into your web browser address bar.

    I just created a group like this with 30 people - done in seconds.

    I believe the limit for a group chat is 50 people.

    Thanks, Matt. That didn't work for me. I tried with and without [ ] and also with names and emails addresses and just email addresses. Teams doesn't recognize any email address except the first one when I type it in - all others are "we could not find..." How frustrating that Outlook and Teams do not talk to one another when they are both Microsoft products.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
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