How to mark a sent message as 'Important' on Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is one of the widely used collaboration tools with over over 20 million daily active users. The service offers features like instant messaging, video and audio conferencing, file-sharing, real-time editing, and Office 365 integration.

Since the collaboration toll can incorporate up to 5000 individuals inside a single team, it’s very important that some messages are conveyed with utmost priority and aren’t lost in a sea of texts. Some messages can be time-critical and thus, marking them as urgent gives them a different priority within the messaging system so that they notify the recipient(s) at the earliest.

How to mark a message ‘Important’ after sending it on Microsoft Teams

Microsoft offers a way to prioritize messages inside Teams. Unlike normal messages, prioritized ones will make sure the recipient can see the message firsthand.

Using the Compose box

Step 1: Compose a message inside the relevant chat and expand the compose box by clicking on the Format button in the bottom toolbar under the Text box.

Step 2: To make sure people pay attention to your message, click on the 3-dot button on the right side of the text box.

Step 3: Select ‘Mark as important’ from the menu.

Your message will be now be marked as Important in the thread. Opening a chat will display an important message first.

Using keyboard shortcut

Instead of selecting the ‘Mark as important’ option from the compose box, you can set a message you’re about to send as important through a keyboard shortcut. Before you’re composing a message or sending one, you can mark it as important by pressing the following keys simultaneously as a shortcut:

Control / Command + Shift + I

When you do so, the left border of the text box will be highlighted in dark red. Once the message is sent, its box will also feature a red bubble with an exclamation mark on the top right corner.