Why you should Pin everything in Microsoft Teams

There is a function in Microsoft Teams called pinning where you can pin certain pieces of information so it’s easier to find. This is one of my favourite things about Teams and has saved me numerous hours searching for chats, channels, conversations and files. You can pin just about anything in Teams.

Pin chat history

Pinning chat history allows you to keep a list of conversations you use often at the top of your chat history, so it’s easier to find. While in chat, click on the 3 dots next to someone you want to pin and select pin:

Now, my chat will be pinned to the top of my list, so the next time I want to chat with Hannah, I don’t have to start a new chat, I can just click on her chat history. You can do this with multiple chat histories, including a group chat that you use often.

Pin Teams

There may be some Teams that are not used every day. Some you might check once a week or once a month. For those types of Teams, you don’t necessarily need them to appear in your Teams list every day, clogging it up and making it harder to find Teams you actually use daily. This is where hide comes in. You can hide certain Teams and keep ones you use often to the top of your list.

In Teams, click on the 3 dots next to the team you want to hide, and select hide.

This will hide the team and put it in a “hidden teams” list. Please note when you do this, it will also mute all channel and Team notifications. But now, my Teams list is more tidy and only showing Teams I use daily.

Pin Channels

Just as we can pin chat history in Teams, we can also pin specific channels within a Team. Sometimes when using Teams, they have a lot of channels we have to navigate through to get to the one that is most relevant. In this case we can pin the channel to the top of the Teams list.

Find the channel you want to pin and click on the 3 dots next to it. Then click pin.

This will pin the channel so it looks like this:

So now I have my channel pinned to the top of my Teams list, so it’s even easier for me to find. If I want to unpin, simply click on the 3 dots next to the channel and select unpin.

Pin Files

If you have been using Teams and Channels for a while, it can sometimes become difficult to navigate through a heavy file and folder structure to find a file that you use on a daily basis. Well, just like chats and channels, we can pin files too! Pinning a file pins it to the top of the file list, so it’s easy to find the next time you need to work on it.

To pin a file, simply click on the 3 dots next to the file you want to pin and select pin to top.

This will pin the file to the top so it’s easier to find the next time you look in the files tab:

You can also choose to make this a tab, which will add the file to a tab in the channel, but you might want to save space in your tabs for other apps.

Pin a Post

For important announcements or posts in a Channel, you can pin those for the entire Team. When you pin a post, it will appear in pinned posts in the information pane of the channel.

To pin a post select the 3 dots next to the post and select pin: