Microsoft Teams will finally introduce File Image preview in chats and channels

The long-awaited capability will be released in June 2024.

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microsoft teams file preview

June 2024 is going to be a great month for Microsoft Teams users, as several new features and enhancements are going to be released to the platform.

The Redmond-based tech giant will finally let users rename the general channel, after 7 years since the platform was introduced to the world.

Microsoft Teams will also introduce brand-new meeting artifacts, which are old meetings, transcripts, or AI recaps that can be accessed by certain users, and they can be useful in various situations (such as winning a lawsuit for wrongful termination, because why not?)

Speaking of new capabilities that should have been on Microsoft Teams for years, the Redmond-based tech giant will finally allow users to preview files in chats and channels with images.

In other words, every time someone posts a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF file in a chat or channel, Microsoft Teams will preview it with a thumbnail image.

Here’s what the entry says:

When you share documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF) in chat or channel conversation, you can see a thumbnail image of the file in the thread. This lets you preview the file’s content without opening it and find the file you need quickly.

Microsoft

Those Teams members who used Slack in the past will recognize the feature, as it has been on the platform for many years now. Slack, which is Teams’ biggest and most serious competitor, already allows users to quickly preview files in chats and channels.

Either way, this new capability will be quite practical to Teams users, as it will allow them to easily tell if they already read a certain document or not, without having to waste time opening it.

To some extent, this sort of thumbnail previewing is already available to OneDrive, with many enhancements to it, including the addition of other files, such as video, or audio files, coming later this year.

So, while it’s strange that Microsoft is only releasing it now, it’s good the Redmond-based tech giant decided to release it.

More about the topics: Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams