How to delay or schedule Teams chat messages to send at a later time

If you’re working after hours or want to send a chat message during someone else’s working hours (such as when your colleagues are geographically dispersed across time zones), you can schedule your message to send at a later time in Teams. This works for both internal and external chat recipients.

Note
This only applies to chats – not channel conversation posts.

Here’s how to delay Teams chat messages:

How to schedule Teams messages to send later

1. Compose your message as you normally would.
2. Right-click the Send button and set the date and time you’d like the message to be delivered

3. Click Send at scheduled time
4. Click the Send button

That’s it! Your message will be sent at the scheduled time.

How to edit or delete a scheduled chat message in Microsoft Teams

Later, you may change your mind or want to edit the message text or change the delivery time for a previously scheduled message.

Note
Deleted scheduled messages will not be delivered and cannot be restored.

Here’s how to edit or delete a scheduled message:

1. Hover over the scheduled message and select the ellipsis (…)
2. Click Edit (or Delete if that’s what you want to do)

3. Edit the message and select the checkmark when finished to save your changes.

That’s it!

Note
If you don’t see the Edit option, it is likely that your Teams administrator has assigned a messaging policy to you that prevents editing sent messages. This is a simple toggle in the messaging policy they control.

Business use cases

Here are some scenarios in which scheduling messages to send later might be appropriate:

• You want to send a message outside of business hours but don’t want it to end up at the bottom of many others to come
• You want to send a reminder about an upcoming meeting or deadline
• You want to send a message when someone is in a different time zone
• You want to send a message when someone is on vacation or out of office
• You want to make sure you don’t forget to welcome somebody back, or acknowledge a significant date

References and further reading

• Schedule a message in Teams