Outlook "Share to TEAMS" cant find certain channels

Iron Contributor

The new "Share to TEAMS" is showing up for our users, and it is a great feature, but there are serious problems with the search within the app.  We are able to search for users with no issue, but searching for a group or channel is rarely successful.  I would guestimate that only 25% of my channels show up in the search.  I have already verified that channels don't show up even if I am an owner of the group.  And there is no way to search for a "General" channel.  There are no results for us.  Is this a problem with our environment, or a known issue with the feature? 

 

On a side note, I've always had trouble sharing thing from my phone to Teams if I'm looking for a "General" channel.   

35 Replies
Hello, my experience is as follows. I can search and see all my channels (many) but not the hidden ones at the bottom. That doesn't matter though and could be working as designed. As for private channels they are not discoverable. When it comes to the "general channels" I have the same experience as you. I suppose that could be working as designed as well but don't know to be honest. Difficult to say when there's so brief information about the feature.
I am seeing this issue as well - channels show up as 'People' for me, and attempting to share to them results in an error:
"We could not share the mail. Try sharing it again."

The only channel I have successfully shared to is the one listed in the (arbitrary, three-item) list of 'Recent Locations). Currently the feature is broken.
I found a solution to this that worked for me - bizarrely there are two possible 'Share to Teams' options for the ribbon, and one is broken. Choose the 'filled' icon, not the outline one, as per Wim_NL's instructions below, and it should work.

Wim_NL replied to Steven van der Bles
‎Apr 10 2021 07:17 AM

@Steven van der Bles

I did some looking around within Outlook and found out that in my case there are more "Share to Teams" commands available in Outlook. When choosing "Customize the Ribbon" and "All Commands" I can choose from 2. One icon is colored a bit different, the other icon is the same as default shown on the ribbon. This last one doesn't work. The other one does however when adding the "Share to Teams" command to a custom section on the ribbon. Strange.

"Share to Teams" options in "All Commands":

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I'm having the same issue. We have an "articles and inspiration" channel in each of our teams. If I search that only 2 of the teams channels are coming up and there should be 5 of them. I've had other users search and they are having similar results. I tried the tip below about changing the "share to Teams" icon to the solid purple one but that didn't make any improvement.
Yep, same here! I have also tried both variants of the plugin in Outlook, but that didn't work for me.
I've got only 1 Share to Teams icon (purple) and it's already functioning in my ribbon. So not sure where to find that second icon. My issue is that it only returns some channels as options for sending messages. Most of my channels don't appear.

@ChristianBergstrom 
I've found that I can see General Channels by searching for the name of the team.

I find those too. I want access to other channels.

On my side, same issue:

  • new channels doesn't appear even if I restart Outlook and Teams (desktop one)
  • and if I have channels with same name in different teams, 

@Eric_H I have the same phenomenon: not all channels are displayed in the search.
In a team, I only noticed that I find all private channels, but not the public channels.

However, this is not the same problem in all teams.

 

If there are only public channels in the team, I find them all anytime.

@ThorstenMelzer - so anyone have a ticket open with MS about this?  Or a way to get it in front of their product team?  It's been 6+ months so this isn't going away until the issue gets some face time with developers.  

 

My organization only have one "Share to Teams" option and it is the blue filled in icon.  I will say the feature hasn't gotten much traction with our users, but I do use it several times a month and only being able to find 1/4 of our channels is really frustrating.  

 

@Eric_H so far, no ticket has been opened with Microsoft from our company, but I will now request it from our product team.
Even if not everyone uses the feature, it is still very dissatisfying for those who want to use it.

Tried to use this feature to encourage conversations from Outlook to Teams but couldn't find the Team or channel I was looking for. So 6 months on and its still broken, why would a trillion dollar company release features in this state?
We have opened a support ticket with Microsoft. I will keep you updated when there is any significant information

I haven't made much progress with Microsoft support yet, but I did discover one more special feature as part of the support case. For the Teams where I could not share mails, I was Teams Owner myself, but not a member of the M365 group. So I had to betray myself and confirm that myself. Then I could reach all channels of this team.

That's interesting. In my case I'm confident it is not permissions because "share with Teams" will find some channels within a Team I am an owner/member of, but not all. For instance, Team "Test1" contains Channels "General, Channel1, Channel2, Channel3, & Channel4." "Share with Teams" finds the General channel if I search for "Test1", and "Channel3", but shows no results for Channel1, 2 and 4. And I'm not dealing with any private or hidden channels in my testing. All Channels have existed for months.

@Eric_H 

I have a similar issue, if I search the Team Name I only get back the general channel. But I can search for most channels by their name. This wouldn't be a problem except we created a Template Team for projects where every team has the same 5 channel names. and the search results are limited to the most used 5 (not even most used by me but just in general). When I search a team name I would expect it to return all channels for that team.

Have you heard anything from Microsoft support yet?

@Devon_BirchThere were no helpful hints from the support, but the following own realization: Even though I was a Teams Owner on the affected teams, I had to request my inclusion in the M365 group. I have then approved myself there :facepalm:
:light_bulb: Check your group membership at Outlook.