Save Zoom meeting chats

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Overview

The following settings and instructions apply to chat within a Zoom meeting.

Note:

Anyone who joins a meeting late, or who has to reconnect to a meeting, will miss any chat that happens while not connected. Some people may use a keyboard instead of a mouse. People using assistive technology may not be able to copy or follow links in the chat. Follow these best practices before, during, and after your Zoom meeting:

  • Send URLs and files before the meeting whenever possible. If new ones are introduced during a meeting, you should share them as part of the follow-up.
  • Send participants the Zoom keyboard shortcuts ahead of time to help anyone using a keyboard or assistive technology participate.
  • Include important information shared in the chat in your follow-up.
  • When sharing a link in the chat, speak the URL. Also consider using a URL shortener to make the link easier to speak and copy.

Chat settings for a Zoom meeting

Hosts should review the following meeting settings in their profile, and make any desired changes prior to a meeting:

Chat

  • Allow meeting participants to send a message visible to all participants.

    If this setting is toggled off, participants will not see the option to chat in their attendee controls. Consider preventing chat in publicly shared meetings to reduce unwanted spam messages.

  • Prevent participants from saving chat.

    This setting is only available if chat is enabled. Check this box to prevent participants from saving chat. Consider using this setting if the chat might contain sensitive information that should be stored securely.

Private Chat

  • Allow meeting participants to send a private one-on-one message to another participant.

    As a host, you can allow participants to chat with other participants if they are members of the same Zoom account or organization. For example, participants using their university Zoom account can chat with other participants who are also using their university Zoom account.

    If this setting is toggled off, participants can still chat with everyone and send private messages to the host.

    Notes:
    • To chat with contacts outside your Zoom account, you need to add them as external contacts.
    • Chats saved by the host will include private messages sent to and from the host. Other participants' private chats will not be saved or made viewable by the host.

Auto saving chats

  • Automatically save all in-meeting chats so that hosts do not need to manually save the text of the chat after the meeting starts.

    Toggle this setting on to automatically save public chat to everyone and your private chats for meetings you host. Automatically saving chats can help you more easily respond to questions or share information from the meeting chat in a follow-up email message.

    Attendees may need to save their chat manually.

File transfer

  • Hosts and participants can send files through the in-meeting chat.

    As a host, you may allow participants to share files through the in-meeting chat. The files will not be saved to the chat text file.

    Turn this setting off to prevent participants from sharing malicious and unwanted files, especially in publicly shared meetings.

About saved meeting chats

You can save the chat from a Zoom meeting to a text file. Both hosts and participants may save the chat unless the host chooses to prevent participants from saving the chat.

The saved text file will include chat messages sent to everyone and any private chat messages sent by you or to you.

Important:
Before sharing a copy of a Zoom chat with others, carefully review the chat for private messages, names, or other sensitive content which you may need to redact.

Save your meeting chat

Both hosts or participants can manually save a chat as a text file, unless the host chooses to prevent this.

As a host, the file will contain messages sent to everyone, as well as any private messages sent to you or by you.

As a participant, the file will contain the messages sent to everyone after you joined the meeting, as well as any private messages sent to you or by you.

Manually save your chat

To save your chat while in a meeting, select Chat. In the chat window, select More, then Save chat.

This will save the text file to your default location, usually Documents > Zoom > [Folder with meeting name, date, and time].

Other save options

As a host, you may choose to automatically save the meeting chat as a file. This file will contain the messages sent to everyone, as well as any private messaging in which you were directly involved.

If you are recording your meeting to the Zoom Cloud, the host can also save the in-meeting chat to the Cloud. Only chat messages sent to everyone while the meeting is being recorded will be saved in this file.

This is document bgfu in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2023-10-31 12:25:58.