A new feature recently rolled out to Teams. You can now choose to share a Teams conversation using Outlook. The feature is found via message’s … (three dots, ellipses) menu. This shares the message and all it’s replies.
Then the Outlook-style window will open up. You can add your comments, do editing of message etc. Just like you’d expect.
You can also do some settings on the top (with dark theme they show up really badly – but it is real life. If you intent to use this a lot it is easier to use light mode. You can for example attach more files into the message.
Or you can do other settings as well. If you have a sensitivity labels configured you can set them as well.
For the text itself.. You can turn on/off the lights for easier editing. The dark theme is not relayed to the recipient.
Once you are ready you can send the message. For the recipient it looks like this:
Why and when
This feature wouldn’t have been added to Teams unless there is a need for that. In case you need to share some information to recipients who are not in a team – or, let’s face it, are Outlook/mail oriented – this makes it really easy. It could be that you are working on information that you need to share with your customer. Overall I welcome also this integration to Teams. It it is better than copy paste.
However, with great power comes a great responsibility. You can now very easily share information off Teams using email to anyone. It is very important to get sensitivity labels to those teams that contain sensitive information. Data Loss Policies should also be applied.
After these warnings, it is good notice that since all channel message replies also shared this is a very easy – out of the box way – to copy off a one discussion thread and store it to some other location (OneNote for example) or even send it to another team.
It is also good to note that you can also share chat messages to Outlook.
It is good to note that this include the link to the team but it does not allow replying directly into a Team from the email message.
I didn’t find any way to turn off this feature. At least not yet.
Vesa Nopanen - My Metaverse Day 
For me, it looks exactly the same in Teams, but it only exports the current message and never the entire conversation. Am I doing it wrong?
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I don’t think that can be used wrong. I just tested this one and it shows me the thread replies as well.
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Does not send the entire conversation for me either, just the current message I select to send.
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When I just tested this (running a general release environment) I got all three replies included to the original post in my Outlook when I did Share to Outlook from Teams.
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How did share more than one message at a time? Would you please tell me details with snap shot?
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I chose the top message of the thread and … Share to Outlook. It contained replies inside.
If you mean me selecting three different messages –> I didn’t do that.
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> I chose the top message of the thread and … Share to Outlook. It contained replies inside.
I have tried this so many times, but it always only shares exactly ONE message with Outlook, and never an entire chat.
Please share a screenshot how you manage to share more than one message, or an entire chat, with Outlook (sharing screenshots is very easy with Imgur, for example: https://imgur.com/upload).
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Here it is https://myteamsday.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/2021-03-02_14-26-35.png?w=1024
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I don’t understand this. I seem to do exactly the same as you, but still only get to share one message only and always.
Maybe it only works on chats that I have started myself? (Can’t find one at the moment to try)
Anyway, I still fear that this would only export/share one thread of a chat (at best), but not the entire chat with all contained (sub-)threads.
[sorry for the double post. It seems to be somewhat difficult to answer to the correct post in the thread]
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Here’s two screenshots of what I do.
1. Select the first message of a chat -> “Share to Outlook”:
2. The resulting e-mail, always containing only one message:
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The difference there is that I was doing the “Share to Outlook” for a channel conversation – not to a chat message. Chat messages don’t have threads.
When tested on chat message I get the same result as you do.
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Thank you, now I see it.
When I try this on a channel conversation, it indeed works (for that particular sub-thread).
Why only is this functionality not available in a chat? This would easily solve the problem that a great many people have who can’t archive/export their important Teams chats, see for example here:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/education_ms/forum/edu_msteams-edu_chat/export-messages-from-teams-chat/2e522719-8384-4c87-a7e5-12b279172437?messageId=50ac9779-4f00-4ef7-a5de-95fc20b05348&page=1
https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/37466629-teams-chat-history-export-feature
One could simply send the chats to oneself via Outlook and then archive them as MSG files, that would be optimal. Even more so, as such export of a chat to Outlook also contains embedded images from the chat in their original resolution.
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For exporting there is a API in preview. Not intended for end-user but if organizations require export/archiving it can be met with the help of this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/export-teams-content
Some organizations require/set retention policies for messages so those don’t even want a easy way for people to export them.
But I agree – there would be use cases for archiving the chat personally.
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Thanks — this method goes a little over my head. Also, I’m not sure if this would provide for an export of single specific Teams conversations by the respective users themselves — and to an easily readable format like MSG or MHT.
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Being able to share a post via Outlook is a nice feature. But I believe many people are looking for ways to share the entire chat, rather than a single post and associated replies. A single post may not necessarily carry the full context of the conversation. Posts are like tweets, often very short. Many organizations implement retention policies on Teams these days to cut chat trails after some time, but you don’t want to loose the entire conversation. In the company I work for Team chats are trimmed after 1 month.
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I don’t understand this. I seem to do exactly the same as you, but still only get to share one message only and always.
Maybe it only works on chats that I have started myself? (Can’t find one at the moment to try)
Anyway, I still fear that this would only export/share one thread of a chat (at best), but not the entire chat with all contained (sub-)threads.
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