Searching in channels and chats for Microsoft Teams

While Microsoft Teams is a great way to keep information consolidated for your work, the capability to find things in various chats and channels has been somewhat limited. With the addition of enhanced searching in Microsoft Teams, that now becomes much easier. Here’s what it looks like and how it works…

To start your search, type in your search term in the command bar at the top of Microsoft Teams. Here, I’m searching for items from my coworker Sandra Mahan. It gives me the option to narrow my search to Messages, People, and Files, and it starts with Messages:

I also have the option to use advanced filters for messages, such as who they are from:

Or whether they’re items from a chat or a channel:

Or if the search term only appears in a specific channel. In this case, I only want items from Sandra in the Spark Connect channel:

And here we are:

After Messages, I have the option to look for any People who match or have similar names to my search term. I have Sandra’s regular and test account showing up here:

Finally, I can select Files to see anything that is associated with her name:

I can also drill down in the filters to select a specific Team workspace, or a specific file type, such as Excel:

And now I’m only seeing Excel files that are associated with her:

There are a number of other features you might want to explore here: Search for messages and more in Teams