Chat in Microsoft Teams meetings
Most Teams meetings include a chat where meeting participants can share info without disrupting the flow of the meeting.
Note: If you don't see chat in your Teams meeting, contact your IT admin.
In this article
Start the conversation before the meeting
View and send messages
In your meeting controls, a red dot on Chat 
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To view the message, select Chat
The meeting chat window opens to the right of the main screen.
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To send a message, compose it in the text box and then select Send
You'll have the same options as other chats in Teams, so you can format your text, send pictures and GIFs, use emojis, attach files, and so on. For details, see Chat help.
To hide chats from appearing in the main meeting window, select More actions 
To snooze chat bubbles, select Mute 
Start the conversation before the meeting
You can also prep people for an upcoming meeting through a meeting chat (unless the organizer limited the chat).
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Right-click the meeting event in your Teams calendar.
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Select Chat with participants
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Type in your message.
Note: People invited to a meeting can access the meeting chat before, after, and during the meeting, even if they don’t attend.
Continue the conversation after the meeting
After the meeting, you can access the chat conversation in several ways:
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Select Chat
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Select Calendar
Meeting attendees with the necessary permissions can continue the conversation they began during the meeting (unless the organizer limited the chat to only during the meeting). These include:
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All meeting attendees of scheduled single instance meetings.
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All meeting attendees of scheduled recurring meetings who are included in the meeting invitation.
Certain meeeting attendees will not be able to continue the chat after the meeting. These include:
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Attendees who are forwarded an occurrence of the series or those who get nudged into an occurrence of that series.
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All external meeting attendees or anonymous users who aren't managed by an organization
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Someone has been manually removed from the meeting chat or chooses to leave. (For more info, see Leave or remove someone from a group chat
Chat in recurring meetings
For recurring meetings, the chat conversation continues from one meeting to the next. When participants open their chat window, they’ll have access to all the messages that were exchanged in the previous meetings.
Note: If a participant is removed from a recurring meeting series, that participant will lose chat access.
Inviting someone to a single occurrence
People invited to a single meeting in a recurring meeting series can participate in the chat with other attendees. They won't see chat history from previous meetings in the series, but they can send and see chat messages during the meeting.
If you want to invite someone to join one of your recurring meetings but not the rest, make sure you forward the invite for the single instance, not the entire meeting series, to ensure chat privacy.
Tip: If you've invited an external participant to be a guest speaker and you want to further limit their access to the meeting chat, you can schedule their presentation as the meeting's last session. The meeting organizer or moderator can then monitor the participant list during the meeting, and if the speaker joins outside their allocated time, they can manually remove them.
Note: After the meeting starts, people you invite can see the chat from the time they are invited until the meeting ends. You can invite them by adding them where it says Invite someone or dial a number in the participant list.
Chat in channel meetings
For meetings in a channel, all channel members can see and add to the chat conversation, whether they go to the meeting or not. The conversation will be on the channel's Posts page, under the meeting title.
Note: People who are not part of the channel but are invited to a meeting won't be able to use the chat.
More info about chat access
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If you're the organizer of a meeting, you can modify chat settings. Limit chats to take place only during the meeting, not before or after, or turn chat off altogether.
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Up to 1,000 people who receive an invitation to a meeting can access the meeting chat during the meeting, while up to 750 people who receive an invitation to a meeting can access the meeting chat before and after the meeting. The 1,000-person limit for in-meeting meetings and the 750-person limit for pre- and post-meeting meetings includes people who don't come to the meeting.
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If you're adding a list with more than 150 members to a meeting invite, they'll only be able to use the meeting chat during the meeting. If you want everyone to be able to access the chat before and after the meeting, expand the DL before you send the invite.
Note: If more than 20 people attend the meeting, participants will not see the automated message informing them they've joined the chat.
If some people in the DL are required attendees and the rest are optional, put those required on the Required attendees line of the invite and add the entire DL to the Optional line.
Note: If adding a DL makes the chat exceed 1,000 people, you won't be able to add the list.
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Anonymous and external participants have chat access only while attending the meeting (except in channel meetings, where they will have no access to chat).
Note: If people from federated or non-federated orgs are not invited to the meeting, they can't be added directly to the meeting chat before, during, or after the meeting for security reason. Adding these external participants to the meeting chat will prompt the creation of a new group chat.
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