Forum Discussion
Teams messages search function does not show full conversation
frzir I think the people that are saying it "used to work" or "works sometimes" need to understand what I believe is going on. Teams has a cache of messages stored local, if what you are searching for is a recent search and/or the message thread is still in its local cache you will see the search results in the full conversation. If not then you only see the one message.
Not sure if there is a way to load more into the cache but if you find a message from a year ago you'd better plan on spending the rest of the day scrolling back. And if you do, NEVER change conversations because when you go back to where you were scrolling you'll be back to today and have to start over scrolling and scrolling.
And for reference, I also use Slack, just did a search and found a message from over 2 years ago, clicked on it and in less than ONE SECOND it popped that message up in the context of the complete conversation. Slack rocks! Teams is useless for recovering information from previous conversations (unless they happened in the last day or two).
phlyx Reposting this tip in case it got lost above. No need to scroll through a year's worth of chat unless you have nothing to search on. If you're able to search on _something_ and can find the date of the chat you're interested, perform a search like this: (Sent:2019-11-13 From:Karen) OR From:Brian Sent:2019-11-13
Use that entire string, including parentheses, both sides of the OR statement. That returns on the left all the messages between Karen (me) and Brian on 11/13/19, ordered by timestamp.
phlyx That makes sense. I miss slack, but we gotta use what our coworkers are using unfortunately.
.. I wonder if there is a way to get Teams to download all chat history and keep it cached. I'd rather the app run slower than have a practically non-functioning search.
- I agree, we have MASSIVE SSD hard drives local. But then again Slack isn't a hog, it's just how they handle things. Even Teams in a browser does the same thing and Slack in a browser is great. When you search and go back a couple years in a thread, you have a button at the bottom that says (LATEST MESSAGE), click on it and you're back to today. Teams doesn't have that either.
