If you’re wondering how to remove emoticons from Microsoft Teams chat, you’re not alone. After a brief bit of research, I found hundreds of commentators on Microsoft’s community forums, Reddit, and other channels all asking the same question.
Ultimately, while emojis can be a fun way to express yourself on Microsoft Teams, just like GIFs, stickers, and reactions, you probably don’t want to use them all the time.
Maybe you want to maintain a professional appearance when chatting with a client through Teams or avoid having an automatic animated emoticon pop up whenever you enter a shortcut.
Here’s what you need to know about managing emojis on Microsoft Teams.
Why Remove Emoticons from Microsoft Teams?
If you’ve stumbled onto this article, you probably already have a reason for wanting to remove emoticons from Microsoft Teams. However, some people still don’t see the appeal.
A lot of people love emojis and emoticons. Microsoft Teams users have been clamoring for the option to create their own custom emojis for a while now – a feature Microsoft only recently introduced. However, while emojis are great, the fact that they appear automatically on Microsoft Teams, whether you want them to or not, is annoying.
Microsoft’s animated emoticons for Teams automatically appear in your chat when you enter a specific shortcut. That means you constantly need to be wary about what you’re typing.
Say you’re working with long lines of code and need to enter something like <34> into a chat with a coworker. The last thing you want is for that <3 to instantly transform into an animated heart.
Or maybe you’re working with a design team and want to reference something in brackets, like (jar). You probably don’t want that to be replaced by an animated jar, either.
Can You Remove Emoticons from Microsoft Teams?
So, what’s the solution if you’re sick of all those animated smiley faces and images? Unfortunately, there isn’t one – at least not a convenient one. Microsoft has acknowledged a lot of the customers who have complained about the automated emojis on its community forum. However, they haven’t introduced an option to “disable” emoticons.
From what I can tell, the only way to remove an emoji is to hit Ctrl+Z on your keyboard to “undo” the automatic replacement of your text. That’s fine if you’re only sending one or two messages that might have sections that automatically convert into emoticons.
However, if you’re writing long messages with many brackets and potential shortcuts, you will waste a lot of time manually using CTRL+Z on all of them.
After some searching through forums like Reddit, I did see one user saying you could use the > shortcut in chat to enter “verbatim” text, which sometimes prevents the emoticon from appearing. However, I tried it multiple times, and that didn’t work for me.
What Can You Do About Microsoft Teams Emoticons?
From what I can tell, there’s no easy way to remove emoticons from Microsoft Teams on a broad scale. However, you can still do a few things to manage your messaging policies.
For instance, the first thing I’d recommend is giving Microsoft feedback. The company regularly releases updates, patches, and features based on customer requests.
One option is to head over to the Microsoft Community forum, and share your thoughts there. Alternatively, you can give feedback directly from the Teams client, by clicking on Settings and more (…) then select Help and click on Suggest a feature or Give feedback.
Another step worth taking as an individual user of Microsoft Teams is to turn of the animations for Microsoft Teams emoticons. Again, this won’t stop your text from automatically converting into a smiley, but at least you won’t have the annoying animations.
To do this, log into Microsoft Teams, and click on the (…) next to your org name and profile picture. Click Settings and click on Appearance and Accessibility.
Scroll down to Animation and toggle the option to Turn off animations on. When you next head into your Teams chat, you’ll see that your emojis have been replaced by static, simple emoticons.
I know it’s not a real “fix,” but it’s something.
Removing Other Expression Features from Teams
Although you can’t remove emoticons from Microsoft Teams, there are various ways admins can control how users can express themselves when using Teams chat.
As a Microsoft Teams admin, you can create messaging policies, which you can assign to entire teams, specific people, or certain groups. With these policies you can control who can use Giphy GIFs, memes, stickers, and custom emojis on Teams.
To create a custom messaging policy, log into the Microsoft Teams admin center and go to Messaging Policies. Click Add then enter a name for your new policy.
Scroll through the settings until you find the following options:
- Upload custom emojis: This allows you to decide which users in your organization can create custom emojis. By default, all users on Microsoft Teams will be able to create emoticons, but you can switch the option off if you prefer.
- Delete custom emojis: You can also choose which users can delete custom emojis. The “delete” option is off by default for everyone except Teams admins. However, once again, you can change the setting to allow more people to delete the emoticons.
- Use Giphy in conversations: If you’re sick of chat channels being filled with animated GIFs, you can turn the option to include Giphys in chat conversations off. Scroll down a little further, and you can also place restrictions on which Giphys are available, based on their “content rating”.
- Memes in conversations: For more professional settings, you might choose to switch the “Memes” option off for users entirely. Or you might just allow a few users to access them.
- Stickers in conversations: Again, you can turn stickers off in chat conversations, or only allow a handful of people to use them.
Removing Emoticons from Microsoft Teams
Unfortunately, there’s no option for removing emoticons from Microsoft Teams entirely. You can’t even disable the automatic “text to emoji” conversion feature. At least, not yet. However, you can always use the Ctrl+Z option mentioned above, or disable animated emoticons.
Plus, if you’re an admin, you can prevent your users from accessing a range of other expression features, from GIFs, to custom emojis.
Hopefully, Microsoft will pay attention to its users and introduce a “disable emoticon” option in the future. For now, though, we’re stuck dealing with emojis, whether we like them or not.
FAQs
Can you turn off auto emoji in Microsoft Teams?
Currently, there’s no option for users or administrators on Microsoft Teams to turn off the “auto emoji” feature. You can turn of animations for emojis as an individual user. Plus, admins can prevent users from accessing GIFs, stickers, and memes in Teams by creating Messaging Policies for Teams.
How do I remove an emoji Reaction in Teams?
If you accidentally send an emoji reaction to a message in Teams, you can hover over the emoji you want to replace or remove, and simply click the reaction again to remove it, or replace it with a different reaction.
How do you hide reactions in Microsoft Teams meetings?
As an admin, log into the Microsoft Teams admin center and click on Meetings followed by Meeting policies. Choose the policy you want to edit, and scroll to the Meeting engagement section. Then toggle the Reactions setting to off. You can switch it back on anytime. Click Save to confirm the changes.
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