How to Set Reminders in Microsoft Teams

One of the most requested features in Microsoft Teams is rolling out now. I have waited years for this rollout, but before I get to the news, let’s start with the problem it solves.

Most of us have done this more times than we can count. Some messages don’t need immediate attention, and some chat or channel messages need work later in the day or later in the week. So, what do we usually do?

• We drop the message link into our own (Me) chat to revisit later,
• We save the message and hope we remember to check it,
• We add it to a to-do app,
• Or set reminders in Teams Calendar,
• And some use the Remind app in Teams from the Apps section.

But in Slack, it’s as simple as typing, “Remind me about this in two hours.”

That kind of native message reminder was missing in Teams.

Now, that changes with the new Microsoft Teams Message Reminders feature, rolling out in October 2026.

It gives us a simple way to set a personal reminder directly on a chat or channel message.

So, when we come across a message that we need to deal with later, we can set a reminder right there in Teams. This is one feature I have quietly wanted since the day I started using Teams!

The new Teams message reminders feature lets us turn any chat or channel message into a private reminder, right inside Teams.

In plain terms, it gives us a way to set a reminder to look at the same message after a period of time. Just select a message, choose when to be reminded, and Teams will bring that message back to our attention at the scheduled time.

When the reminder is due, Teams sends a notification. The original message context stays connected to the reminder, so there’s no need to remember what the follow-up was about or search through the conversation again.

This can be useful when the action depends on someone else’s message. For example, if a coworker shares something that needs a follow-up later, a reminder can be set directly on their message instead of creating a separate task and losing that context.

The feature covers the full set of actions we would expect:

• Create: Create reminders for a specific chat or a channel message and choose exactly when the nudge should arrive.
• View: Check reminders from a dedicated Reminders view, with upcoming, active, and completed items organized separately.
• Update: Change the reminder time when plans change.
• Delete: Remove reminders that are no longer needed.

Are Teams message reminders visible to others?

This is probably one of the first questions that comes to mind, especially for group chats and channels. If a reminder is set on a message in a group conversation, will everyone else get a notification too?

No. The reminder is completely private to the person who created it. 🔒

There will be no “X set a reminder” notification appearing for everyone in the conversation. The reminder simply stays with the individual who created it and acts as their own follow-up.

So, even when the original message belongs to a busy group chat or channel, the reminder remains a private way to keep track of something that needs attention later.

The setup is short enough to read once and never look up again.

1. Right-click the chat or channel message that needs a follow-up.
2. This opens the Message actions menu.
3. A new Remind me option appears alongside actions such as Save message, Forward, Copy link, and others.
4. Select Remind me and choose when the reminder should appear: later today, tomorrow, next week. When none of the presets fit, customize the reminder notifications with the ‘Custom’ option.

That’s it. The selected message is now added to the reminder, so there’s no need to copy the message link somewhere else just to remember it later.

A reminder can also be updated, marked as complete, or deleted at any point. Notifications follow the existing Teams notification settings, so the reminder fits into the notification setup already in place.

Alongside the option itself, Teams will also introduce a dedicated ‘Reminders’ view, where all the reminders created across chats and channels are in one place.

Instead of going back through individual conversations to find a message that needed follow-up, everything is collected in one place. It organizes reminders into upcoming, active, and completed items, which makes it easy to see what is coming up, what needs attention now, and what has already been taken care of.

There are plenty of everyday situations where a scheduled reminder earns its place:

• Follow up with a colleague after a meeting.
• Review a document shared in a Teams channel later in the day.
• Respond to an important customer discussion after finishing higher-priority work.
• Check whether someone has provided the information you requested earlier.
• Revisit an important decision before a deadline or another meeting.
• Reply to a message that came in while you were in the middle of a call.
• Follow up on an approval that isn’t urgent today but needs to be closed by Friday.

The quieter benefit sits underneath all of them. Being able to acknowledge a message without acting on it straight away takes away the pressure to answer everything the moment it arrives. For me, that one habit has done more for concentration than most productivity apps I have tried.

Note for Admins

From an administration standpoint, there is very little to do here.

• The Teams message reminders feature will be enabled by default, and reminders will follow users’ existing Teams notification settings.
• This also appears automatically for everyone in the organization across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

So, this is largely a no-configuration rollout. The main thing for IT teams to be aware of is how reminder data is associated with existing Teams message content.

When a user creates a reminder, it is stored with context from the associated message. This means the feature introduces another way for message-related information to be retained and accessed within Teams.

So, organizations that have specific Microsoft 365 compliance, data retention, or information governance requirements may therefore want to consider this behavior as part of their existing data-handling and documentation practices.

Finally, the workarounds can finally be retired

The message is in Teams. The conversation is in Teams. But the reminder for that message usually had to live somewhere else, in a to-do app, a calendar, another reminder tool, or simply in our heads.

From October 2026, the reminder can stay in Teams too.

It’s a small addition, but one I’ve been waiting for a long time, and I can’t wait to start putting it to use.