How to find Drafts

Thanks for replying. For existing conversations, there is no "Draft" message once a message is composed. I just discovered that I can manually make the conversation UNREAD using More Options. Marking it UNREAD before leaving it would make it much easier to identify when I'm ready to resume. But I would need to remember every time to do this because as soon as I click the incoming conversation, I've lost my reference. It would be really nice if the app would do this automatically, that is, make the conversation UNREAD as soon as text is typed, and keep it UNREAD until ether Sent it or text is cleared. There's been many times I've returned to a conversation thinking I said something only to realize I did, but never sent it. Making and keeping the conversation UNREAD would help tremendously in all regards.

I agree. Finding drafts should be easy. I typically have 30+ chats each day and going back a week, I'll have over 100. Opening all these non labeled chats to try and find one in particular is a challenge. And don't get me started at how Teams chat doesn't have the ability to group chats for easy use like Slack does. Please add more user friendly features to bring Teams up to current expectations

Hi Chad,

Thank you for reaching out. My name is Furkaan, a user just like you. I’d be happy to help you with your concerns. Unfortunately, Microsoft Teams currently doesn't have a dedicated feature to show a list of all draft chats. However, there are a couple of workarounds you can try to find your unsent message:

Scan the Chats List: Look closely at your Chats list on the left side of the Teams window. When you start a new chat with someone and haven't sent a message yet, it might show a subtle "draft" indicator next to the contact's name. While Teams doesn't do this for existing conversations with message history, it's worth scanning your list in case the new chat was the one you're looking for. Search by Name: If you remember part of the name of the person you were chatting with, try searching for them in the chat bar at the top of the Teams window. This will filter your Chats list and hopefully bring the conversation with the unsent message to the top, making it easier to find.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below. Best Regards, Furkaan

Desktop Teams (at least on macOS) recently started seeming to lose drafts that I've entered when I go elsewhere in the app and then come back. The desktop app used to save drafts very reliably, but this bug seems to have come up sometime in November/December 2024 and persists so far.

The only potential way I've found get the draft back is to just quit the desktop app and then relaunch it. At that point, the draft will often reappear as if it was never gone. It's not 100% successful, probably about 90% of the time in my experience.

With the current bugginess with drafts, I've just started copy/pasting them elsewhere, either into a local text editor if they're just text, or sending myself a Teams chat with the current draft, just to preserve it in case it disappears.

I hope they fix this bug soon, as well as sync drafts to the cloud so that they sync across Teams clients, must like drafts work in Outlook; the current Teams drafts functionality is super-buggy and annoying even when it's working.

Hi Chad,

You're absolutely right, the lack of a dedicated draft feature in Teams, especially for existing conversations, can be cumbersome. While there's no automatic way to mark conversations unread when composing a message, here are some options that might be helpful:

Manual "Unread" Marking:

As you discovered, using the "More Options" menu and marking the conversation as unread is a good solution. It might become a habit to do this whenever you start composing a message but get interrupted. While not automatic, it can help you visually identify those conversations later. Flagging Important Conversations:

Teams allows you to flag conversations. This won't mark them as unread, but it will highlight them in your chat list for easier reference. This can be helpful for conversations you know you need to come back to, even if the message isn't fully composed yet. Using Search:

If you remember some keywords from your unsent message, you can try searching the chat bar in Teams. This can be a good option if you have a general idea of what you were writing about. Alternative Solutions:

Since the ideal automatic unread marking isn't available, consider these options outside of Teams:

Notes App Integration:

Some third-party note-taking apps integrate with Teams. You could quickly draft your message in a note and then copy it over to Teams when ready to send. These notes would be saved outside of Teams and wouldn't be affected by accidentally opening a conversation.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below. Best Regards, Furkaan