Chat

Chat allows meeting participants to send messages to each other or to the presenter/instructor within a meeting. You can send a private message to an individual user or you can send a message to everyone in the meeting.

Why use chat

Encouraging students to use the Zoom chat feature during your class in Zoom is a great way to create community, increase student engagement and interaction, and provide an opportunity for everyone's voice to be heard. Use Zoom Chat for class ice breaker activities or to check for understanding and get student feedback during your class.

To learn more about teaching techniques and things to consider using the chat, please see How to Zoom Chat by Karen Costa Links to an external site.(written 3/14/22 - 7 min read).

How to use chat

While in a meeting, select Chat in the meeting controls:

This will open the chat panel on the right. You can type a message into the chat box or select the drop-down menu next to To: send a message to a specific person. You as the host can control with whom the participants can chat by selecting the more (...) menu.

Sharing documents in chat

You can share a document with participants by selecting the File button at the bottom of the Chat pane. Once the document has been uploaded and shared participants can download it by clicking on it.

Chat settings

As the host, you can choose who the participants can chat with and you can disable chat entirely. The Zoom Chat features can also be managed by your Co-Host or Alternate Host should you choose to designate one to help you.

You can also capture a meeting's chat transcript Links to an external site.. Chat can be saved manually or automatically. Auto-save chat will automatically save Chat locally on your computer. You can also manually save your chat when you start local or cloud recording.