How to send an email to a Microsoft Teams channel
Microsoft Teams allows users to share files; these files can be uploaded directly from the desktop client, or from a mobile app. With the mobile app, most documents that are shared will be removed after two weeks unless you upload them to Sharepoint and then share a link.
The desktop app, the mobile apps, and Sharepoint are three different ways to share a file to a Microsoft Teams channel. If you have a paid/enterprise Microsoft Teams license, you can also create an email for each channel in a team.
The email can then be used, per the channel settings, to send messages and files to the channel from any email service and/or client.
Email Microsoft Teams channel
In order to create an email for a Microsoft Teams channel, you must
- Have a paid/enterprise license for Microsoft Teams.
- Be the admin of the team the channel is for.
1. Create email address for channel
Creating an email address for a channel is easy.
- Open Microsoft Teams on your desktop.
- Select Teams in the column on the left.
- Select the team and the channel you want to create an email address for.
- Click the more options button next to a channel.
- Select ‘Get email address’.
- Copy the email address in the pop-up box.
- Click Advanced settings to change who can send an email to the channel.
- Click Save.
2. Send email to Microsoft Teams channel
Now that you’ve generated an email address for a channel, you can send an email to it.
- Open any email app or service of your choice and compose a new message.
- In the address/To field, enter the email for the Teams channel.
- Give the email a subject and a body, and attach files if you want to.
- Send the email.
3. Receive emails in Microsoft Teams Channel
Emails sent to a Microsoft channel appear as a message.
- Open Microsoft Teams.
- Select Teams in the column on the left.
- Select the team and the channel you’re expecting an email on.
- You will see the email appear as a message.
- Click the more options button next to an attachment and you can download or open it in Microsoft Teams.
- Click ‘View Original email’ and the message will be downloaded in EML format.
- All emails and their attachments will appear in the Files tab under the Email Messages folder in Microsoft Teams.
- You can access the Email Messages from Sharepoint as well.
- Anyone in the team can reply to an email but the replies will appear only in Microsoft Teams.
4. Delete channel email
You may decide at some point that a channel doesn’t need an email address anymore. You can delete the channel but if the channel itself is important, you can simply remove the email for the channel.
- Open Microsoft Teams.
- Select Teams in the column on the left.
- Select the Team and channel you want to remove the email for.
- Click the more options button next to the channel.
- Select Get email address.
- Click ‘Remove email address’ in the box that opens.
- The email address for the channel will be deleted.
Conclusion
An email adds more flexibility when it comes to sharing files or sending messages to a channel. It is onesided though; users can only send a message from their email app/service. To see the conversation that’s going on, they must be part of the team. If you ever need to receive files from someone outside a team, and then have multiple people collaborate on it, the email feature is an excellent way to do it.
