Post Basic Messages

The atomic unit of Slack is the message, a chunk of text with a unique time stamp that appears chronologically in a channel or conversation. In this chapter, I look at the basics of messages, ranging from the etiquette of what you say to the practical issues of composing, editing, deleting, and responding.

Note: In the next chapter, Go Beyond Basic Messages, I look at adding and managing message attachments, plus I cover two special kinds of text you can insert in the message list: snippets and posts.

Employ Etiquette

Every community, whether online or in “meatspace,” has both implicit and explicit rules of behavior. The explicit ones may be easier to follow, because they’re stated outright; however, they may be observed in the breach, rather than as the rule. The implicit rules may seem tougher, as you have to intuit them over time, yet you may receive more reward for conforming to or at least understanding these subtle cues than for following published rules.

Interacting within a Slack team requires more cultural understanding than most online groups. Why? Because Slack teams are intentional: every member is invited or allowed to join. Any message that causes offense or mistrust can ripple back and forth indefinitely.

Learn the Culture

When you join a Slack team, you should look to written rules, if they exist; it might even be reasonable to ask for guidelines to be created if none do. Take your cues from the tone, language, and interaction in which you see others engage. Ask questions privately if you’re concerned about what you’re about to say publicly, and if you’re really unsure, check with an admin before posting. Remember that, apart from the bots, everyone else on the board is another human being.

Expect and Practice Civility

The watchword for discussion on the Internet has long been “attack ideas, not people,” but it is seemingly more ignored than honored. It can be easy to make ad hominem attacks on people because you disagree with their ideas, and it is easy to become the target of these attacks inadvertently (as happens regularly in all social media and online forums).

Civility doesn’t mean that no one may ever offend another person. That’s an impossible goal. Civility can equate with politeness, though it’s more correctly the assumption of an absence of bad intent or ulterior motives on someone else’s part. (If someone does have bad intent, addressing it in a Slack team almost certainly won’t produce a positive outcome.)

Being civil doesn’t require that you agree with everything everyone else says, nor vice versa. Rather it requires patience, calm, and a step back.

Even if you enjoy going hammer and tongs with people on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or elsewhere, the same behavior that might be encouraged or tolerated there and seen as being within the bounds of civil-yet-vociferous discourse could be a horrible breach of etiquette or terms of employment in Slack.

Note: Worried about being too talky or bugging folks in Slack? I cover that in Be Productive.

Write a Message

It’s easy to write a message. In any channel or conversation, with the insertion point or focus in the Message field, type some text—Hello, world!—and press Return or Enter. (In iOS tap the Send button; in Android tap the Send button, which is unlabeled, but we call it Send, too.)

To put a line break within a message without posting it, press Shift-Return. (In iOS, tap the Return key, which may require switching to the numeric keyboard on a small-screen device; in Android tap the Return button on the default keyboard.)

You can also paste into the Message field.

Tip: If you mention a public channel in a message by typing a hashtag followed by its name, like #general, the name becomes a link in the posted message. Anyone with access to that channel can click the link to switch to it. (Slack has no equivalent to the hashtags used in Twitter or Facebook—if you prefix a word that’s not a channel name with a pound sign, nothing happens.)

Note: Need to communicate more text or include more formatting than a message can contain nicely? Use a snippet or a post, discussed in Go Beyond Basic Messages.

Format a Message

You can add some text styles and structured formatting to messages by typing punctuation in a special way (Figure 30).

Figure 30: Inline formatting adds variety and clarity to messages.

Formatting options include:

• Underscores for italics: Put _underscores_ around a word or phrase, and it will be set in italics.
• Asterisks for bold: A *highlighted word or phrase* becomes bold when you post the message.
• Tildes (~) for strikethrough: ~For text you want to indicate should be removed~ For text you want to indicate should be removed
• Angle brackets for block quotes: To set off a line of text, precede it with a single >; use three (>>>) to set off that line and all that follow in the message (Figure 31).

Figure 31: Three angle brackets inset multiple lines.

• Back ticks for code formats: A single ` before and after a range of text sets it in fixed-format code style; three ticks (```) before and after sets off an entire block. (You may want to use a snippet for anything longer than a few lines.)

Note: Even though the above character-based formatting options look like Markdown, Slack’s basic messages (and posts, described later) have a syntax that diverges from standard Markdown. Slack can let you use what it calls “Markdown (raw)” in a snippet (covered in Insert Snippets), but the Markdown syntax is highlighted rather than previewed.

Control Key Shortcuts in OS X

A few Unix shortcuts for text (used in the bash shell and elsewhere) work in Slack for Mac (as well in as many other OS X apps) to move around within the message text area. The most useful of these are:

• Control-A/E: Move to start or end of the line.
• Control-K: Delete from the cursor position to the end of line.
• Control-Option-F/B: Move forward/back one word (Option-Right and -Left arrow do the same).
• Control-D: Forward delete (i.e., delete the next character following the cursor).

Reference Other People

Although Slack doesn’t thread replies—where you click a reply button and there’s an association between the new message and its antecedent—it does let you reference anyone in the team by their handle (their username). These are @mentions, just as in Twitter. And just as with Twitter, @mentioning someone makes it more likely that they’ll take note of your post.

To reference someone by name, you can:

• Type an @ followed by their whole handle.
• Type an @ and then start typing part of their handle, first name, or last name (as entered in their profile), and select a match from the menu that appears (Figure 32). To select a person, you can tap or click in the menu, or, with a keyboard, arrow up or down and then press Return or Enter.

Figure 32: Slack lets you cycle through or select handles when you type @, followed by letters.

• In a desktop or Web app, type an @ and then start typing part of their handle and press Tab to cycle through names.

Tip: In a team with a lot of people with the same or similar name, it’s really easy to autofill the wrong name. Pay attention every time to be sure the right Tim or Kelly gets the reference.

Note: In a paid team, a user group can be set up with a unique handle, like @managers, that trigger notifications for everyone in the group when the @mention is used in a message. Wherever an individual @mention can be used in Slack, a user group mention works, too. See Take Control of Slack Admin for more information.

When you post a message with an @mention in it, several things happen:

• Slack uses the notification rules for that person to determine how they’re alerted—this could range from nothing at all, to an email message being sent or notification sliding by on a screen, to loud noises on multiple devices.
• For that person, unless they’ve turned off the feature for that platform type (desktop/Web or mobile), Slack will highlight their handle in the referencing message.
• For that person, Slack adds the mention to the mentions pane (click the @ button in the desktop and Web apps, or in the mobile apps tap the More Items button and select Recent Mentions; this button is sideways in iOS).
• If anyone you reference hasn’t joined the channel in which you’ve just posted the message, Slackbot prompts you to invite that person or send them a link to the message (Figure 33).

Figure 33: Mentioning someone prompts Slackbot to suggest inviting them or sending them a link.

You can put more than one @mention in the same post. If you use auto-completion, Slack inserts a colon after the @mention, but the colon is for semantic purposes (to look like a reply); it doesn’t have a function.

Get to Know Your Team

You can bring up any member’s profile by clicking or tapping their avatar or name in a message. Alternatively, open the team directory from the More Items menu—in the directory, you can search for names or scroll through and click or tap to view someone’s profile card (Figure 34).

Figure 34: A profile provides actions, information, and contact methods for a team member.

In addition to showing personal details, a profile card has a Message button that you can use to start a direct message conversation.

Include Links to Web Pages and Media

If you include a URL in a message, Slack tries to provide a preview in the message list.

Paste in a URL of a Web page, and a preview of the page—descriptive text or an image—usually appears (Figure 35). You can remove the preview, too, by hovering over it, clicking the tiny grey x at its left, and then confirming.

Figure 35: Pasting a URL produces a preview; remove it by clicking the x to the left.

Tip: Team admins can blacklist URLs and domains. If you have sufficient permissions, clicking the x to remove a preview also lets you issue such a ban.

Include a URL that points to an image, and Slack typically shows a shrunken version of the image. Links to video, at YouTube or elsewhere, should result in a playable preview.

By default, Slack enables previews, including previews of images up to 2 MB in size. The desktop and Web apps let you disable these previews as well as allow larger images: click the team name at the top of the sidebar, choose Preferences > Messages and Media, and look in the Inline Media & Links section (Figure 36).

Figure 36: If you find previews distracting, you can disable them.

Use Emoji

If you’re over 35, emoji may seem ridiculous to you; under that age, and they may be an invaluable part of your argot. Emoji are icons that replace or complement the text-only emoticons from the early days of the Internet.

Emoji can be a short way to express a complicated thought, a simple way to express approval, or a fun way to imply a host of things. I often use a simple thumbs up 👍 icon as a reply or encouragement. The “pile of poo” 💩 is popular as a joke response when things are in the crapper or you’re chiding someone for a bad pun.

It’s an emoji world, and we’re living in it. Slack has gotten kudos for its embrace of emoji and its capability to extend the built-in character sets supported on its client platforms.

I’ll talk about emoji elsewhere in this book, including in Leave a Reaction, but this is a good place to introduce their basics.

Setting up Your Emoji

You can just go with the defaults, but if you prefer, you can pick your emoji style in the desktop and Web apps by clicking the team name at the top of the sidebar, choosing Preferences > Messages & Media, and then picking an option in the Emoji style section (Figure 37). Yes, there are different drawings used on different platforms! You can switch among them, or even disable emoji entirely—just select None.

Figure 37: How many ways can piles of poo be drawn?Several, apparently.

Slack converts your typed emoticons to emoji (like :o to 😮), but if you don’t want that to happen, uncheck the “Convert my typed emoticons to emoji…” checkbox, found just below the Emoji Style section.

To set the default emoji skin tone from a desktop or Web version of Slack, click the smiley face at the far right of the Messages field to open the Emoji Browser (Figure 38), and in the Emoji Deluxe area at the bottom, click the hand and then click your desired tone. (If you don’t see a hand, your operating system version doesn’t support this feature; many operating systems added it in 2015.)

Figure 38: To set a default skin tone, click the hand at the lower right.

Adding an Emoji to a Message

You can add an emoji by browsing or by typing its name:

• Browse for the emoji (desktop and Web): Click the smiley face icon at the far right of the Messages field to see the Emoji Browser (shown in the figure just above), with buttons at the top that display different categories: People, Nature, Food & Drink, Activity, Travel & Places, Objects, Symbols, Flags, and Custom. As you hover over any emoji, it shows a preview at the bottom and its text name, which you can memorize if you prefer typing.
• Type the emoji name: In the Messages field, type a colon and one (mobile) or two (other platforms) characters, like :ol, to see a pop-up showing potential matches from which you can select, or you can keep typing to shrink the number of matches (Figure 39). Typed emojis must be closed with a colon. Slack uses the same standard names for emoji that are used across many other programs and services, which is handy. Here’s a list.

Figure 39: You can “type” an emoji even if you don’t know its full name.

Tip: You can add an alias for the default name of an emoji! In the desktop and Web apps, click the team name at the top of the sidebar and choose Customize Slack to open the Customize Your Team page, where you can set an alias for an existing emoji. Use this feature to set up a short or memorable name for an emoji you invoke often.

• Type an emoticon: Slack also converts emoticons to emoji for a lot of popular text sequences, like :o to 😮. A full list appears at this Slack support page.

Supersize Me!

You can make these symbols appear larger by entering only emoji (up to 23) in a single message. You can’t put any text in that message, even on a separate line. Slack jokingly announced this feature as jumbomoji.

Slack maintains a 1:2:3 size ratio for emoji in most clients (excluding Android), where reactions (described later) are size 1, inline emoji with other text are size 2, and jumbo freestanding emoji are size 3. These measure 10 by 10, 20 by 20, and 30 by 30 pixels on a non-Retina Mac, for instance.

Can’t Get Enough Emoji? Add Them!

Slack is all about letting others extend its core functions—and that includes emoji! These custom emoji max out at 128 pixels in either dimension and can’t exceed 64 KB in size. I try to make them 128 pixels square so I can control the appearance better. In Slack messages, they may appear at various sizes (see the sidebar just above).

In the desktop and Web apps, click the team name at the top of the sidebar and choose Customize Slack. The Customize Your Team page opens with the Emoji tab selected (Figure 40). Name your emoji, and then upload the image and click Save New Emoji.

Figure 40: To create my glennhead emoji, all that’s left for me to do is to click the Save New Emoji button.

The upload appears in a list at the bottom of the page and becomes available for use by anyone in your team (Figure 41) on the Custom pane in the Emoji Browser.

Figure 41: Now I can use my emoji in a message.

Custom emoji can even be animated, which can be distracting, so you should consider whether that’s a good idea. Really. Think about it. (Currently, Slack for Android doesn’t handle animated emoji.)

Edit or Delete a Posted Message

Unlike Twitter and many other messaging services, after you post a message in Slack, you can edit it or delete it. This makes fixing typos—and removing awkward or inappropriate messages—a snap.

Note: Team administrators can disable editing and/or deleting, so if this topic isn’t working for you, ask your admin about it.

Slack provides several ways to edit messages:

• Desktop or Web app: For the immediately preceding message you posted, press the Up arrow in the empty Message field.

  Or, hover over any message that you wrote, click the Message Actions button, and then choose Edit Message.

• Mobile app: Hold on a posted message that you wrote to open a menu, and select Edit Message (iOS) or Edit (Android).

When you edit a message, it changes from a posted item to an editable field (Figure 42).

Figure 42: Editing a message gives you access to all the same features as posting a new one.

You can edit with all the same features as a new message, and then either click Save Changes or press Return to approve the changes. Or, to cancel your edits and leave the message as it was, click Cancel or press Escape. In the mobile Slack apps, tap Save to post your edited missive, or tap Cancel.

A tiny, gray “(edited)” tag appears next to your edited message in the message list.

Similarly, there are a few ways to delete one of your posted messages:

• Desktop or Web app: Hover over any message, click the Message Actions button, and then choose Delete Message. Confirm the deletion (Figure 43).

  

  Figure 43: You’re always prompted before deleting.

  A destructive edit works too. For your just-posted message, make sure the Message field is empty, press the Up arrow, select and delete all the text, and click Save Changes or press Return. Confirm the deletion.

• Mobile app: Press on the message to open a menu, and tap Delete Message or Delete. You will be asked to confirm the deletion.

Navigate in the Message List

While other people are composing messages in the selected conversation, you’ll see up to two names beneath the Message field. When more than two people are typing, you’ll see what has become a classic Slack message: several people are typing. You may have seen this meme around the Internet already.

As more messages are added in a channel or conversation, the older ones scroll to the top and disappear. They’re not gone for good! In paid teams, you can scroll back to the start of time—when the channel or conversation was created. In free teams, only 10,000 messages across the entire team are retained, and the oldest stop appearing first, no matter which channel or conversation they were in. Fortunately, Slack warns you when you’ve looked back to the edge of a free team’s messages (Figure 44).

Figure 44: Abandon ship! Ye have reached the edge of the known world.

Business on the Top, Party on the Bottom

In the iOS app, if you reach the bottom of the message list and pull up with your finger, Slack throws a little party for you (Figure 45).

Figure 45: Hurray! You’ve reached the end!

Put on your party hat!

Threading in Slack: A Short-term Problem?

You might notice already that there’s something missing from Slack—something quite obvious if you’ve used other multi-party social networking systems. Slack lacks threading.

Threading organizes replies to a message. These replies can be from you or from other people. Slack has channels and conversations, but it doesn’t have the kind of sub-topic tracking that you’ll find in Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.

It’s not a fatal flaw by any means, but it can make it hard to pick up the, ahem, thread of a conversation when many people in a channel are talking about multiple topics over a short period of time. The best solution in that case is to create more channels to host popular topics.

A partial solution to this problem is to start a discussion in a post, since posts can have comments. I discuss posts in the next chapter. I have mixed feelings about threading in Slack, because it’s not part of its current nature, and I can’t see exactly how they’ll make it work. Regardless, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, who was recently interviewed for an article in the Verge, says that threading will be coming to Slack later this year.

Dates and Times

Slack separates the message list into days. It displays a Today date separator as the newest division, then Yesterday, and then markers for each preceding day. As you scroll back in time, the date marker slides to the top and remains fixed there so long as there are preceding messages you can’t see that were also posted on the same day.

A time stamp appears above or next to each posted message, but if the same person posts multiple messages so that they appear contiguously in the message list, you’ll see just the first message’s time stamp and hovering over (or, in mobile, pressing) any subsequent message in that group reveals its time stamp. In the desktop and Web apps, you can also click a message’s time stamp to open it in the Web client’s message archives, discussed further in Use the Message Archives.

Tip: If you’d like a denser message display without avatars in the desktop and Web apps, click the team name at the top of the main sidebar, choose Preferences > Messages & Media, and then switch from Clean to Compact.

Unread Messages

Slack uses the terms read and unread a little differently than other systems that track what you’ve viewed. If you return to a channel or conversation after being away, Slack inserts a red line in the message list to delineate where unread messages start (Figure 46).

Figure 46: A New Messages line marks where you last left off.

If the number of unread messages exceeds what can be displayed in the currently visible area of the message list, a banner along the top notes how many are unread (Figure 47). In Slack’s mobile apps, you can tap it to jump up in the list to the last unread point.

Figure 47: Slack lets you know what you missed.

In the desktop and Web apps, the banner is merely informative by default; to get the same click-and-jump behavior, you have to change a team preference: Click the team name at the top of the sidebar, choose Preferences > Read State Tracking, and select “Do not scroll me or automatically mark messages as read…” Then, when you hover over the banner, you see the word “Jump” at the left; click anywhere on the banner to jump to the first unread message.

Note: Even with “Do not scroll me or automatically mark messages as read…” set on a Mac, you may see erratic performance. Never fear, though: the red bar that marks the last unread messages remains in place, and you can always scroll back up to it.

Here are a few tips for working with unread messages:

• Browsing: You can easily spot a channel or conversation with unread messages by looking for bold type in the sidebar. In some Slack clients, you will also see red badges in the sidebar. The number in the badge indicates either how many unread messages in a channel contain your handle or any highlight words or how many unread messages are in a conversation (Figure 48).

Figure 48: For conversations with unread messages, Slack shows how many new messages are waiting.

• Keyboard navigation: If you’re using a desktop app, or the Web or a mobile app on a device with a physical keyboard, you can jump among conversations and channels that have unread messages, too. Press Option-Shift (or Alt-Shift) and arrow up or down to the previous or next unread message.
• Marking all as read: To catch up with all unread messages in the selected channel or conversation, press Escape in the desktop and Web apps or scroll to the bottom in a mobile app. As shown in Figure 47, above, there’s also a blue banner at the top of the message list: you can select the little white icon—or anywhere in the banner—to mark as read, too. And you can nuke the unread status for an entire team by pressing Shift-Escape in the desktop and Web apps (Figure 49).

Figure 49: Slack warns you (amusingly) about wiping out the unread status for everything you follow in a team.

Interact with a Message

Once a message is posted to Slack, you might want to interact with it as on a social network: mark it with a star, reply to it, copy it, share it, or get a permanent link. The key to these interactions is the Message Actions menu. To open it in the desktop and Web versions of Slack, hover over a message and click the Message Actions button. In the mobile apps, press and hold on the message until a menu appears (Figure 50).

Figure 50: iOS shows the date at the top (left). Slack for Android says “¡Hola!” at the top and has the same items, but with icons and slightly different wording (right).

Most of these interactions are fairly obvious, and I covered the Mark Unread command in the previous topic. Here, I want to explain how reactions work, what to expect when you Mark a Message for Later (with a star), and how to Share or Link to a Message.

Leave a Reaction

The emoji I talked about earlier are also available from the Message Action menu as reactions, which are little avatar addenda attached to a message. Reactions are always public, so anyone who can view the conversation can also view any reactions. Most obviously, you might want to put a thumbs up 👍 after a message you agree with, but a wide variety of images are available for different reactions (Figure 51), and you can add more than one.

Figure 51: Jason (jsnell) has two reactions beneath his message with one person each, while Chip’s response got four clicks on a wine glass.

Once a reaction is added, other people can click it to add their assent, which is shown as a number count next to the emoji; both are contained inside a tiny rounded-rectangle box.

Reactions Are Searchable

We discovered a neat way to create multiple ways to mark messages to find later. Although Slack includes the Starred Items list described next, you can create the equivalent of custom favorites lists with reactions, because Slack lets you search by emoji that appear in reactions. For example, my editor left an exclamation emoji after messages that she wanted to go through during her final edit pass on this book!

You can pick different emoji for different fave lists, and then search on them to retrieve matches (see Search by Star, Link, or Emoji).

Mark a Message for Later

To mark a message that you want to keep for general reference, you can “star” it. In the desktop and Web apps, click the star that appears to the left of the message when you hover over it. In the mobile apps, press and hold a message and then tap Star Message in the menu. The starred status of a message is always private. (Twitter users pay attention here, because stars are public in Twitter.)

Note: In free teams with a 10,000-message limit, starring a message doesn’t prevent it from disappearing.

To view messages you’ve starred, click the Starred Items button at the upper right of the desktop and Web apps, or choose Starred Items from the More Items menu in the iOS app (Figure 52). (Android can’t yet display starred items.)

Figure 52: Starred Items lets you see items you marked for later viewing, and jump back to where they appear in a sequence.

The Starred Items pane acts like your own private “best of Slack” collection and, in the desktop and Web apps, you can hover over the message in the Starred Items pane and click the Jump button, and Slack takes you to the point in the message list where that message appears so that you can see it in context.

To remove a message from Starred Items, either hover over it (desktop and Web apps) and click the star or press and hold it (iOS) and then tap Remove Star.

Note: A confusing aspect of Slack is that it lets you star both channels and messages, even though they’re entirely different actions. To find out about starring channels, see Which Star Does What?.

Share or Link to a Message

If you want to refer to a message that was already posted, you can, of course, copy and paste its text as a new message. However, rather than copying an old message, you can share it or link to it. (Currently, you can share only from the desktop and Web apps.)

When you share a message, it appears again at the bottom of the message list in an embedded, quoted format, along with a new message that you can add while you prepare to share it (Figure 53). In contrast, when you link to a message, it appears in the message list again, but without any new message and exposing its archive URL (Figure 54)—yes, each Slack message has a unique URL. The URL can be clicked to view the message in its original position in its original channel.

Figure 53: You can add a comment to a shared message when you post it, as my editor has here, but you can’t click it to jump back to its context in the message list.

Figure 54: A linked message doesn’t include a comment, but the link can be clicked to view the original message, thus pulling it up in the context of what was originally said right before and after it was posted.

To share a message:

1. In a desktop app or the Web app, hover over the message and then click the Share Message button.
2. The Share Message dialog lets you attach a new message that appears above the embedded, quoted message. In that dialog, type a new message to go with the old one (Figure 55).

   

   Figure 55: The Share Message dialog makes it simple to share a message.

3. If you want to share the message in a different channel or conversation from where it first appeared, choose that venue from the “Share in” pop-up menu. You can choose only channels or conversations where everyone has permission to view that message, so if you don’t see this pop-up menu, that’s why.
4. Click the Share button.

To link to a message:

• Desktop and Web apps: Click the message’s Message Actions button, and choose Copy Link.
• Mobile app: Press and hold on a message to see a menu, and select Copy Archive Link.

Now, paste the copied link into a new Slack message (Figure 56)—the message can contain more text than just the link. After you enter the message, if that channel or conversation has privileges to see that link, Slack will quote the original message!

Figure 56: A Slack message can be referenced within another message, and the message content appears inline.

If the linked message becomes older than the 10,000-message limit in a free team, the link to it will stop working and its embedded preview will disappear. These messages aren’t deleted, but the team must convert to paid before you can regain access.

Tip: In the desktop and Web apps, you can also copy a message’s link by Control-clicking its time stamp and choosing Copy Link, or by clicking the Share Message button and clicking the link button in the Share Message dialog.

Note: You can also “pin” messages and change their read/unread status. These actions correspond more directly to channels, so they’re discussed in Work with Channels.

Use the Message Archives

While you can access every message in any of the Slack apps, the Message Archives in the Web app offers what I’d call the equivalent of “full transcripts,” displaying each message and item in a given channel or conversation precisely as it appears in the message list—but on a Web page without the ability to post new messages or search, though you can react to a message. (For a free team, the Message Archives is bounded by the 10,000-message limit.)

I imagine these archives were more useful when Slack’s in-app search had fewer features. As it has improved, the Message Archives seem increasingly like raw logs you have little reason to consult. One key exception is that once a channel has been archived, the Message Archives are the only way to review its messages unless you un-archive the channel (see Archive a Channel, later, for details).

The easiest way to visit the Message Archives for a channel or conversation is to click a message’s time stamp in a desktop app or the Web app. Or try one of these techniques:

• In a Web browser’s address field, enter team-name.slack.com/archives. (You may be prompted to log in.)
• Hover over a message and use the Message Actions menu to choose Copy Link; in a mobile app, press and hold on a message to see the menu and select Copy Archive Link. Then paste the link into a browser’s address field to open it in the archives.

The Message Archives show all channels of which you’re part on the Channels tab, and all conversations you’re privy to under Direct Messages (Figure 57). Even better: the Direct Messages tab shows the last message in each conversation, something unavailable elsewhere.

Figure 57: The Message Archives shows all your channels and conversations and lets you browse.

You can’t search in the Message Archives for individual messages; you use a different part of Slack for that, as I explain in Search Effectively. However, you can browse all messages from a certain person using the Filter By Name field to limit what you see—this can be useful in a large team.

To navigate quickly to an earlier date in a channel or conversation, first open the channel or conversation by clicking its name. Then, in the right-hand sidebar, click Pick a Date (Figure 58).

Figure 58: The archives show messages chronologically, but let you click Pick a Date to drill down to a single day’s discussion.