How to Use Commands in Microsoft Teams

Over the past few years, many of us have come to rely on Microsoft Teams as a part of our daily communications. But there is a set of commands that most users are unaware of. I love showing these extra little gems to people, and I frequently hear “Is that new?”

It’s not, but unless someone tells you about them, you could be forgiven for not realising they exist.

There are a couple of ways to use commands in Microsoft Teams, so let’s check them out:

Using Commands in Teams

Have you ever noticed the Search box at the top of Microsoft Teams? If you click into it, you can search for messages, files, group chats, teams and channels. That’s handy, but if you click into the box and type a forward slash / you’ll see a list of commands.

To use a command, type / then start typing the command you want to use. In the example below, I started with / and then typed “away” (quotes not required). This displays a drop down list showing the away command, which is used to set my status to away.  I can use my mouse to click on the command, or, since I’m already using the keyboard, I can use the up or down arrows to select the command, then press the Enter key to activate it.

A message appears to tell me of my change, then I’m good to go. I can check my user account icon at the top right of the Teams window to see the change.

To set it back to available, I follow the same steps, and this time I select available from the drop down list.

So far, so good, but you can use the same feature to make changes in the Compose box. That’s the one at the bottom of the Teams window that you use to type your messages. Along with the status settings, you can see a few extra options specific to chats and messages.

For example, in the compose box, you can use the / symbol to quickly add a loop paragraph, start a video recording, mute the chat, and more.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the search box in Microsoft Teams is a bit of an underused feature. Now you know it can be used for more than just finding content, it might be worth checking it out. A couple of things to keep in mind are that the features available to you may vary depending on your system set up, and that Microsoft are adding new features all the time, so keep checking for when they arrive.