How to Create a Custom Emoji in Microsoft Teams and How to Control them as an Admin

The custom emoji feature in Microsoft Teams lets your organization bring its own personality into chat, channels, and meetings. You can turn team jokes, internal memes, brand icons, or seasonal artwork into reactions that everyone in your M365 tenant can use.

In this guide, I will walk through:

• What custom emojis in Microsoft Teams are
• Why you should use them for holidays, events, and memes
• How to create a custom emoji in the Microsoft Teams app
• How to enable, restrict, or disable custom emojis as an admin
• FAQ

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What Are Custom Emojis in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams now supports user uploaded custom emojis. Users can create an emoji from image or GIF files and use them in chats, channels, and meetings, both as an inline emoji and as reactions. Every custom emoji becomes part of your organization wide library and is available alongside the standard Teams emoji set.

Microsoft notes a few key points about the feature:

• Custom emojis can help build culture and identity, reinforce branding, and add clarity and tone to messages.
• Up to 5,000 custom emojis can be added per tenant.
• The feature is on by default in most tenants, and available across chats, channels, meetings, and even cross tenant scenarios.

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Why Create Your Own Emoji

You could just stick with the default emojis, but custom emojis unlock more interesting uses.

1. Holidays and Seasonal Events

• Create an emoji for company holidays, regional celebrations, or end of quarter milestones.
• Drop a custom snowflake or pumpkin emoji into chat to signal a themed day without changing every background or banner.
• Use reactions on announcements to measure sentiment during an all hands or seasonal campaign.

2. Special Projects and Internal Campaigns

• Give each project or team its own icon and use it as a quick reaction to show that a task or request belongs to that stream of work.
• Create emojis that represent internal programs such as security training, wellness days, or hackathons.

3. Recognition and Gamification

• Build “badges” as emojis for values, achievements, or shout outs.
• React with a specific custom emoji when someone closes a big deal, solves a nasty incident, or helps a customer.

4. Brand and Culture

• Turn your logo, mascot, or product icons into an emoji so your internal communication feels on brand.
• Create emojis that come from your culture such as common phrases, inside jokes, or office memes.

5. Pure Fun

• If your organization allows it, turn popular memes, pets, or cartoon versions of teammates into emojis.

Custom emojis can make long project channels and incident bridges feel a little more human.

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How to Create a Custom Emoji in the Microsoft Teams App

The exact visuals vary slightly between the classic and new Teams experience, but the steps are the same.

You need permission to upload a custom emoji. By default, most users can upload them unless an admin has restricted it.

Step 1: Open the Emoji Picker

1. Open Microsoft Teams on desktop or web.
2. Go to any chat, channel, or meeting conversation.
3. In the message box, select Emoji, GIFs and Stickers (the smiley icon) and then choose Emoji. You will see the standard emoji categories at the top.

Step 2: Go to Your Organization’s Emoji

1. Look at the bottom of the emoji window.
2. Select Your org’s emoji or the small icon that represents your organization’s emoji library. This opens the Custom section for your tenant. In some layouts this appears as a circle style emoji icon with a dotted outline.

Step 3: Add a New Emoji

1. Choose an image file from your computer. Microsoft recommends:
   • File types: JPEG, PNG, or GIF
   • Square images for best results
   • File size under 256 KB
2. Give your emoji a short, searchable name that is all lowercase with no spaces. This is important, because users will type this name in the search field when they want to use it.
3. Select Add emoji to upload.

In the custom emoji area, select Add emoji (the plus sign).

After a short delay, your new emoji will appear in the custom emoji gallery and can be used by anyone in your organization. In some cases, changes can take several hours to appear across all devices or users.

Alternative: Add a Custom Emoji While Reacting

You can also create an emoji in the flow of work while reacting to a message:

1. Hover over a message and choose More reactions.
2. Select your organization’s emoji icon in the reactions picker.
3. Use the same Add emoji plus button to upload and name a new emoji.

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How to Use Custom Emojis in Chats, Channels, and Meetings

Once your custom emoji exist, using them feels exactly like standard emojis.

Add a Custom Emoji to a Message

1. In the message box, select Emoji, GIFs and Stickers, then Emoji.
2. Choose Your org’s emoji from the bottom of the panel.
3. Scroll or search by name.
4. Select the emoji to insert it into your message and send.

React With a Custom Emoji

1. Hover over the message you want to react to.
2. Select More reactions.
3. Choose Your org’s emoji and pick a custom emoji, or search by its name.

If you have created any custom Teams emojis yourself and have rights to delete them, you can right click on one in the picker to see who created it and access delete options.

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How Teams Admins Can Enable or Disable Custom Emojis

Custom emojis are controlled centrally from the Microsoft Teams admin center. If users in your tenant do not see the custom emoji category or cannot upload images, your policies probably need an update.

1. Turn Custom Emojis On or Off for the Tenant

To globally enable or disable the feature:

1. Go to https://admin.teams.microsoft.com and sign in as a Teams admin.
2. In the left pane, go to Teams admin center > Messaging settings.
3. Find the Custom emojis section and toggle Use custom emojis on or off.

• On: custom emojis are available tenant wide.
• Off: users will not see the custom emoji category and cannot use or upload custom emoji.

2. Control Who Can Upload and Delete Custom Emojis in Teams

You can refine control further with messaging policies:

1. In the Teams admin center, go to Messaging policies.
2. Select the policy you want to edit or create a new one for a specific group of users.
3. In the policy settings, look for the Custom emojis options:
   • Upload custom emojis
   • Delete custom emojis
4. Set these to On or Off based on your governance model.
5. Assign the policy to specific users, groups, or the whole organization.

By default:

• Upload custom emojis is enabled for all users.
• Delete custom emojis is enabled only for admins.

3. PowerShell Control With Set-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy

If you manage Teams by script or want to bulk configure messaging policies, you can also use PowerShell with the latest Microsoft Teams module.

To view it, if you are changing the Global policy (if you are changing a different policy then replace Global with the name of your policy):

$policy = Get-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy -Identity Global
$policy.CreateCustomEmojis

Example to disable creation and deletion of custom emojis for the Global policy:

Set-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy -Identity "Global" -CreateCustomEmojis $false -DeleteCustomEmojis $false

Assign the policy to users as normal and they will no longer be able to create or delete emojis, while other policies can still allow it.

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Troubleshooting: When Custom Emojis Do Not Show Up

If you or your users do not see the custom emoji option, check these points:

1. Tenant setting in Microsoft Teams Admin Center
   • Confirm that Use custom emojis is turned on in Messaging settings in the Teams admin center.
2. Messaging policy
   • Make sure the messaging policy assigned to the user allows Upload custom emojis if they need to create them.
3. Permissions to delete
   • Only Teams admins or users with the appropriate policy can delete custom emojis. Regular users may not see a delete option when they right click.
4. Platform limitations
   • As of today, custom emoji uploads are supported in the desktop and web app. Microsoft notes that custom emojis cannot currently be uploaded on Android, although you can still see and use existing emoji from mobile once they are created.
5. Propagation delay and cache
   • Deletion or creation of a custom emoji can take several hours, sometimes up to 24 hours, to show everywhere. Clearing the Teams cache locally can help if users still see an old emoji.

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Governance Tips for Custom Emojis

A few practices will keep the feature useful instead of chaotic:

• Set a naming convention
  Use short, descriptive names like brand-logo, proj-aurora, or holiday-snowman.
• Limit who can create emojis
  Through a Teams Policy using the instructions above, allow a small set of champions or a branding team to upload emojis for the whole tenant, and turn off upload rights for everyone else if you need stricter control.
• Review the library periodically
  Give admins or community owners delete rights so they can prune low quality or outdated emojis.
• Align with your acceptable use policy
  Make it clear that custom emojis are still subject to HR and code of conduct rules.

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FAQ: Custom Emoji in Microsoft Teams

Who can see my custom emojis?

Everyone in your organization’s tenant can see and use custom emojis, including in shared channels. External users in other tenants cannot browse your emojis library but they can see custom emojis you send to them.

Keep in mind that when anyone in your organization right clicks on the custom in the emoji picker, it will display who has created it and when it was created.

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Can guests or external users create custom emojis?

Guest users and external participants cannot create their own custom emojis in your tenant. Only users with upload permissions in your organization can add new emojis, but guests can still use the emojis that already exist.

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How many custom emojis can we have?

Each tenant can store up to 5,000 custom emojis.

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Can I delete an emoji I created by mistake?

If your policy allows you to delete custom emojis, you can right click on a custom emoji in the picker and choose Delete. If you do not see that option, your admin must delete it for you or grant you the necessary rights.

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Are custom emojis available on the Teams mobile app?

You can use and react with a custom emoji from mobile once they exist, but Microsoft notes that custom emoji and reactions cannot currently be uploaded from Android. Uploading should be done from the desktop or web client.

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Can I completely turn off Teams custom emojis in my organization?

Yes. As an admin you can disable the feature globally in Teams Admin Center > Messaging settings or use messaging policies and PowerShell to turn off creation and deletion for specific groups of users.

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Custom emojis in Microsoft Teams are a small feature with big cultural impact. Used well, they give your people a lightweight way to celebrate wins, tag work, and reinforce your brand in every conversation. With the right admin controls in place, you can keep that energy fun, safe, and aligned with your organization’s standards.

Tags

• Teams