Forum Discussion
Display Teams chat message with date stamp rather than relative day
Is there a way to force Teams Chat messages to display the date of a message rather than "yesterday" or "today"?
e.g. display "27/08/2024" instead of displaying "yesterday 2:12 pm". (I'm creating this post on 28/08.)
We use screenshots of Teams messages in our processes, and having to wait for the actual date to displayed invariably means taking the screenshot is forgotten.
Immersive reader always shows the actual date, but not the recipient of the message. No help there.
6 Replies
This isn't a way to always display the date/time of a message, but I found when you "Forward" a message, the preview will show the message's original compose date/time.
My workaround is to drag Teams to the right side of my screen and include the date in my screen shot.
Unfortunately, there's no built-in setting within Microsoft Teams to directly force the display of dates in chat messages instead of the relative "today" or "yesterday" format. Teams prioritizes this relative format for quick readability in most contexts.
Why Teams Does This:
The "today" and "yesterday" format is designed for quick communication. In a fast-paced chat environment, seeing "yesterday" is often more relevant than seeing a specific date. It helps people quickly understand the context of the conversation.
'In a fast-paced chat environment, seeing "yesterday" is often more relevant than seeing a specific date. '
A complete rationalization of a bad UX. Seeing the specific date and time is way more relevant than "Yesterday" and especially in a fast-paced environment. I need more info, not less.
Are users considered to be too dumb to read timestamps which we do all day everyday in every other application we use?
For Microsoft it would be too smart. They can produce only stupid undertested soft. Get used to it!
Absolutely. MS is always like, "you will take this experience and you will love it" to actual users while selling to business leaders how flexible of an application ecosystem it is. The flexibility is only real when it comes to spying on the users I guess.
Who thought it was a great idea to give less information when it would be easier to just put the timestamps there. How do I even know that "Yesterday" or "Thursday" is even in my timestamp? Crazy.
