Formatting bot messages

Important

This article is based on the v3 Bot Framework SDK. If you are looking for current documentation version 4.6 or later of the SDK, see the conversational bots section.

You can set the optional TextFormat property to control how your message's text content is rendered.

Microsoft Teams supports the following formatting options:

TextFormat value	Description
plain	The text should be treated as raw text with no formatting applied at all.
markdown	The text should be treated as Markdown formatting and rendered on the channel as appropriate; see Formatting text content for supported styles.
xml	The text is simple XML markup; see Formatting text content for supported styles.

Formatting text content

Teams supports a subset of Markdown and XML (HTML) formatting tags.

Currently, the following limitations apply:

• Text-only messages do not support table formatting.

For information on formatting in cards, see Teams Card Reference.

Cross-platform support

To ensure that your formatting works across all platforms supported by Teams, be aware that some styles aren't currently supported across all platforms.

Style	Text-only messages	Cards (XML only)
bold	✔	✖
italic	✔	✔
header (levels 1–3)	✖	✔
strikethrough	✖	✔
horizontal rule	✖	✖
unordered list	✖	✔
ordered list	✖	✔
preformatted text	✔	✔
blockquote	✔	✔
hyperlink	✔	✔
image link	✔	✖

Support by individual platform

Support for text formatting varies by type of message and by platform.

Text-only messages

Style	Desktop	iOS	Android
bold	✔	✔	✔
italic	✔	✔	✔
header (levels 1–3)	✖	✖	✖
strikethrough	✔	✔	✖
horizontal rule	✖	✖	✖
unordered list	✔	✖	✖
ordered list	✔	✖	✖
preformatted text	✔	✔	✔
blockquote	✔	✔	✔
hyperlink	✔	✔	✔
image link	✔	✔	✔

Examples of text formatting

Style	Example	Markdown	XML (HTML)
bold	text	**text**	<strong>text</strong>
italic	text	*text*	<em>text</em>
header (levels 1–3)	Text	### Text	<h3>Text</h3>
strikethrough	text	~~text~~	<strike>text</strike>
unordered list	text text	* text * text	<ul><li>text</li><li>text</li></ul>
ordered list	text text	1. text 2. text	<ol><li>text</li><li>text</li></ol>
preformatted text	text	`text`	<pre>text</pre>
blockquote	text	>text	<blockquote>text</blockquote>
hyperlink	Bing	[Bing](https://www.bing.com/)	<a href="https://www.bing.com/">Bing</a>
image link			<img src="https://aka.ms/Fo983c" alt="Duck on a rock"></img>