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Autocorrect Common Errors in Teams Chat and Channel Messages
After complaining about the recently announced price rises for Microsoft 365, it’s time to reflect that part of the reason why people buy Microsoft 365 is the expectation of new functionality. Although not guaranteed by Microsoft, it’s a truism that software doesn’t remain static for long. Bugs are fixed, but more importantly, new features are added to make the software more competitive.
At this point, Microsoft 365 really only competes with itself. By this I mean that the reason why Microsoft adds new functionality to its products is often to convince customers to upgrade to a higher-priced and more feature-rich license. For example, from Office 365 E3 ($26/month after the increase) to Microsoft 365 E5 ($60/month after the increase). Good logic can underpin the decision to upgrade. For example, a company that needs stronger compliance solutions to satisfy industry regulations might find that the additional Purview functionality licensed by Microsoft 365 E5 is exactly what they need.
And sometimes Microsoft upgrades the base software to satisfy customer requirements or simply fill in a gap that is so obvious that you wonder why it’s taken Microsoft so long to deliver a solution.
Teams Messaging Autocorrect Rolling out to Targeted Tenants
Take the case of message center notification MC1192251 (5 December 2025, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 534487) which proclaims that “Autocorrect is coming to Microsoft Teams compose. Commonly misspelled words will now be automatically corrected while composing messages.” The change applies to Teams desktop on Windows and MacOS and is rolling out to targeted release tenants now with the intention of reaching general availability in mid-to-late January 2026. GCC will get the change about a month later.
Sorry, did I just report that Teams will autocorrect spellings when composing messages? This is the communication vehicle that was going to take over from email that is only just going to autocorrect spellings in 2026, nine years after the product launch when the other Office applications have been able to autocorrect text for years. Yes, that’s exactly the situation. Once the update is distributed to clients, Teams will correct “commonly” misspelled words (meaning no slang, local argot, or technical terms that are not in common usage) as people compose chat or channel messages.
Spell Checking and Autocorrect
Teams has been able to spell check for years, including the ability to autodetect the language used in a message. Autocorrect means that the editor detects common mistyping errors, like “mantain” and automatically replaces the error with the correct value (maintain in this case). It’s still perfectly possible to include a bunch of misspellings in a message because Autocorrect doesn’t pick up every possible mistake. Outlook settings (Figure 1) allow you to configure Autocorrect with new values to check for (like changing Msoft to Microsoft, or correctly capitalizing SharePoint), but that facility isn’t in Teams.
Update: According to Microsoft support, Teams uses a “system-level Autocorrect dictionary rather than an app-specific one, which helps maintain consistency across devices and languages” and that’s why individual users can’t add custom Autocorrect entries. I think that’s a flawed decision because everyone probably has some words they mistype frequently that won’t appear in a system-level dictionary.
In the case of Teams, autocorrect is enabled for all users. If someone wants to turn autocorrect off, they go to the General section of the Settings app and disable the option to Correct words while typing (Figure 2). Notice that there’s no way to add customize misspellings.
Little Things Mean a Lot
It’s good that Autocorrect has turned up in Teams messaging, even if it would be much better if individual users could configure Autocorrect to check for the misspellings that everyone is prone to make when typing.
In passing, let me note that the option to create an audio-only recording of a Teams meeting is now rolling out in production. It’s another example of an update that might not mean much to some but is extraordinarily useful in certain circumstances. You just need to be in the right situation!
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