How to Create a Poll in Microsoft Teams (Complete Guide)

If you’ve ever been in a Teams meeting and wanted to quickly ask everyone a question without the chaos of everyone typing at once, polls are exactly what you need.

Whether you’re running a team standup, a training session, or just trying to decide where to order lunch, polls in Microsoft Teams are super easy to set up. And they work across meetings, chats, and channels.

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through every method, step by step, so you know exactly what to do in any situation.

What Is a Poll in Microsoft Teams?

A poll in Microsoft Teams is a simple question you send to people in a chat, channel, or meeting. Everyone can vote on their answer, and you see the results in real time.

Teams uses a built-in app called Polls (powered by Microsoft Forms) to handle this. You don’t need to install anything extra — it’s already part of Teams.

Here’s where you can use polls:

• In a group chat or channel — great for async decisions
• During a live meeting — perfect for quick feedback or icebreakers
• In a scheduled meeting before it even starts — so you’re fully prepared

Create a Poll in Microsoft Teams

Let me break down each method one by one.

Method 1: Create a Poll in a Chat or Channel

This is the most common way I use polls. You’re in a channel discussion or a group chat, and you want to ask a quick question without turning it into a long thread.

Steps to Create a Poll in Chat or Channel

1. Open the chat or channel where you want to post the poll.
2. In the message compose box at the bottom, look for the Actions and Apps icon (it looks like a lightning bolt or a small grid — it sits on the right side of the compose bar).
3. Click on it. You’ll see a list of apps. Look for Polls.
4. If you don’t see Polls immediately, click Find more apps and search for “Polls.”
5. The Polls window will open. Type your question in the first field.
6. Add at least two answer options. Teams may suggest some based on your question, but you can type your own.
7. Click Add option if you need more answer choices (up to 10 options).

Optional Settings

Before you send it, you have a few settings worth knowing:

• Multiple selections — Turn this on if you want people to pick more than one answer. For example, “Which days work for the team sync?” makes more sense with multiple answers allowed.
• Record names of respondents — If you turn this on, only you can see who voted for what. Everyone else just sees the totals.
• Share aggregated results with respondents — When enabled, everyone can see the vote breakdown after they respond.

8. Click Preview to see how your poll will look before sending.
9. Hit Send when you’re happy with it.

That’s it. The poll shows up in the chat like a regular message, and everyone can click their answer right there.

Method 2: Create a Poll During a Live Meeting

This is where polls really shine. You’re in the middle of a meeting, you want a quick show of hands — without actually raising hands — and polls do that beautifully.

Steps to Create a Poll During a Meeting

1. Join or start your Teams meeting.
2. In the meeting toolbar at the top (or bottom, depending on your layout), look for the Polls icon. It usually looks like a bar chart. Click it.
3. If you don’t see it, click the Apps and look for Polls there.
4. A sidebar panel will open on the right side of your screen.
5. Click New poll (or Create a poll).
6. Type your question and add answer choices.
7. Choose your poll type — more on that below.

8. Click Launch to push the poll to everyone in the meeting right now, or click Save to prepare it and launch later.

When you launch it, everyone in the meeting sees the poll pop up on their screen and can vote immediately. You’ll watch the results update in real time in the sidebar.

Poll Types Available During Meetings

This is something a lot of people don’t know about. Teams polls during meetings give you more options than just multiple choice:

Poll Type	Best Used For
Multiple Choice	Quick decisions, yes/no, A/B options
Rating (1–5)	Satisfaction checks, feedback on a session
Word Cloud	Brainstorming, open-ended ideas
Ranking	Prioritizing a list of options
NPS (Net Promoter Score)	Event or product feedback

For most meetings, multiple choice works fine. But if you’re doing a retrospective or a training, the rating or word cloud options are genuinely useful.

Method 3: Create a Poll Before the Meeting Starts

Sometimes I prefer to set up polls in advance, especially if I’m presenting and don’t want to fumble with settings live. Here’s how to do it.

Steps to Pre-Create a Poll for a Scheduled Meeting

1. Go to the Calendar in Teams.
2. Find the meeting you want to add polls to, and click on it.
3. Select Chat with participants (this opens the meeting chat).
4. In the meeting chat compose box, click the Polls app (same as Method 1 — look in Actions and Apps or the + button).
5. Create your poll question and options.
6. Instead of sending it immediately, you can save it as a draft.

When the meeting starts, go to the Polls panel in the meeting, and you’ll see your prepared polls. Launch them whenever you’re ready.

This is a great approach if you have multiple polls planned for a long meeting. You can line them all up in advance.

Viewing and Managing Poll Results in Teams

Once your poll is live, you can track responses in a few ways:

• In a chat or channel: The poll card in the message updates as people vote. You can see the current vote totals at a glance.
• During a meeting: The Polls sidebar on the right shows live results updating in real time.
• In the Polls tab: If you’ve added the tab to a channel, you’ll see all your polls and their full results there.

As the poll creator, you can also:

• Close a poll to stop accepting new votes
• Re-launch a closed poll if you need more responses
• Export results to Excel for detailed analysis (from the Forms/Polls tab)
• Delete a poll if it’s no longer needed

Tips and Things to Know

A few things that have saved me time or caught me off guard when I first started using polls:

• Polls don’t work in 1:1 calls. They’re only available in group chats, channels, and scheduled meetings.
• Channel meetings also don’t support live polls the same way. Stick to scheduled meetings for the best experience.
• Only the meeting organizer and presenters can create and launch polls during a live meeting. Attendees cannot.
• You can have up to 400 polls per meeting — so no worries about running out if you’re doing a long workshop.
• Polls are anonymous by default for respondents, but you can enable name recording so you can see who voted for what (only you will see this info).
• Results can be exported to Excel. If you need to analyze responses after the meeting, this is a great option for things like training assessments or event feedback.
• Mobile works fine. Participants on the Teams mobile app can vote on polls — they’ll see a prompt appear and can tap to respond.

A Quick Practical Example

Let’s say you’re running a weekly team sync and you want to start with an icebreaker, check on team bandwidth, and get a quick vote on the next sprint priority.

Here’s how I’d set that up:

1. Before the meeting, go to Calendar → open the meeting chat → create three polls in advance:
   • “How’s everyone’s energy today?” (Rating 1–5)
   • “How loaded is your week?” (Multiple choice: Light / Moderate / Packed)
   • “Which feature should we prioritize this sprint?” (Multiple choice with your options)
2. Save them all as drafts.
3. When the meeting starts, launch each poll at the right moment from the Polls sidebar.

This takes maybe 5 minutes to set up, but makes the meeting feel much more interactive. People who’d normally stay quiet end up participating because voting is easier than talking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft Teams polls are a simple but powerful way to make meetings, chats, and channels more interactive. In this article, we covered how to create polls in chats, channels, live meetings, and even before a meeting starts. We also explored different poll types, useful settings, ways to manage results, and practical tips to improve team engagement.

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