If you use Microsoft Teams every day, you’ve probably noticed that the default chat view doesn’t always feel right. Maybe it feels too cluttered. Maybe you can’t see enough messages at once. Or maybe Microsoft recently updated Teams and now your Chat and Channels look completely different from what you were used to — and you just want it back the way it was.
Whatever the situation, you’re in the right place.
In this tutorial, I’m going to walk you through every important Microsoft Teams chat view setting — what each one does, how to change it, and when you’d actually want to use it. No fluff, no unnecessary steps. Just practical stuff you can apply right now.
Why Chat View Settings Actually Matter
Think about how much time you spend inside Microsoft Teams on any given workday. For most people in office or remote work environments, it’s hours. If your chat view is hard to read, cluttered, or just not organized the way your brain works — that adds up to a lot of friction over weeks and months.
The good news is that Teams gives you more control over the chat interface than most people realize. A few tweaks in Settings can make a real difference in how quickly you find messages, how easy it is to read conversations, and how much cognitive load you deal with throughout the day. If you’re tidying up your whole workspace, these Microsoft Teams best practices are a good next read.
How to Get to Chat View Settings
Before we dive into individual settings, here’s how to access the relevant settings panel in Microsoft Teams:
- Open Microsoft Teams on your desktop (Windows or Mac).
- Click Settings and more (the three dots (…) icon) near the top-right corner, next to your profile picture.
- Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
- In the Settings panel, click on Chats and channels in the left sidebar.
That’s the main hub for all the chat view customizations I’ll cover below. Some settings are also accessible directly from the chat list itself, which I’ll point out as we go.
Setting 1: Combined View vs. Separate View
This is probably the biggest change Microsoft has made to the Teams chat interface in recent years — and it’s the one that confuses people the most.
What’s the difference?
- Combined View: Your Chats, Teams, and Channels all appear together in a single unified list on the left panel. Everything is in one place.
- Separate View: Chats have their own dedicated tab, and Teams/Channels have a separate tab — just like the classic Teams layout most people were used to before the 2024 update.
By default, Microsoft now sets Teams to Combined View. A lot of people find this jarring at first, especially if they’ve been using Teams for years and built their workflow around the old layout.
How to switch between them:
- Go to Settings > Chats and channels.
- Under Viewing chats, teams, and channels, you’ll see two options: Combined and Separate.
- Click the one you prefer. Teams saves it automatically — no need to hit a Save button.