Turn off Emojis for Students Responding to Posts

Dear @Andrew Perry,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum. I understand you want teachers to turn off the emoji reactions that students use on Teams channel posts. You mentioned that comments can be turned off, but emojis cannot, and you’d like to know why.

Microsoft Teams for Education does not offer a way for teachers to turn off emoji reactions for students. Emoji reactions follow a global setting in Teams, and this setting cannot be limited by class, channel, or user role. Turning off comments only blocks text replies, not reactions.

Currently, no option to disable reactions for students only, the reactions follow a global policy set by IT admin. If turned off, reactions disappear for everyone, including teachers

Therefore, I recommend some workarounds you can try:

• Turn off comments to reduce interaction
• Set the channel to Only owners can post
• Use Announcements for one‑way messages
• Use Assignments or Class Notebook where reactions are not available
• Ask IT admin to adjust the global messaging policy (if needed)

Moreover, I want you to know that Microsoft deeply values customer experience and feedback. Every single comment matter, and the product teams actively review what customers share to guide decisions and improvements. Your voice is powerful here, and I encourage you to make it heard through the official feedback channels. Therefore, to ensure your feedback reaches the right teams, I highly recommend submitting your feedback directly to Microsoft Ideas · Community, where our product development team can know your requirements and ideas for product improvements. If enough users raise ticket for the same idea, Microsoft may consider adding this feature in the future.

Note: As Microsoft Community moderators, please note that we are not involved in product design decisions and do not have direct access to the development roadmap, I want to assure you that your feedback has been acknowledged and is valued.

However, you can rest assured that you are not alone, I’ll continue to monitor this case and will reach out to you with any new updates as soon as possible. If any updates or announcements are made regarding this feature, I will make sure to share them with you as soon as possible.

I understand this may not be the outcome you were hoping for. I truly appreciate your patience and understanding. If you have any further questions or need further clarification, please feel free to reach out. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for your cooperation.

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Currently, Microsoft Teams does not provide a direct feature for teachers to disable the ability for students to respond with emojis on channel posts. While you can turn off comments, the option to restrict emoji responses specifically is not available. This limitation means that teachers may need to manage emoji usage through other means, such as setting clear guidelines for student interactions in the channel.

For more control over messaging and interactions, consider using the messaging policies available in Teams, which allow for some customization of chat and messaging features, but they do not specifically address emoji responses.

References:

• Teams messaging policy
• Manage messaging policies in Teams
• Custom emojis in Microsoft Teams
• Custom emojis in Microsoft Teams
• Support for live chat and asynchronous channels