Sharing messages in Slack helps to keep conversations in your workspace organized:

• Follow up on older conversations.
• Share the context of a discussion with members in other channels.
• Loop other members into a conversation that matters to them.

Go ahead — give it a try!

Sharing vs. quoting

Both sharing and quoting messages can help you spread information in Slack, but there are a few key differences between them. 

Sharing

By sharing a message, you can quickly forward it to another channel or direct message in a few simple steps. You’ll have the option to add more context to a shared message with an optional note. You can also choose exactly where the message is shared — whether that be in another channel or a direct message.

Here’s how a shared message in Slack appears:

Quoting

By quoting a message, you can manually copy a message link from one channel and paste it to another channel or direct message. A quoted message will expand below its link, just like when you share a link in Slack.

Here’s what a quoted message looks like:

To share or quote?

Short on time? Sharing a message requires a lot less work from you compared to quoting — no manual copying and pasting here! If you want to share a message quickly and add more context at the same time, the share feature is your best option.

Composing a long message with lots of references from Slack? In this case, quoting a message is the better option. You can compose one new message and manually add the quoted Slack messages to help illustrate your point.

Share a message

A message from a public channel can be shared anywhere in Slack, but a message from a private channel or direct message can only be shared in the same location.

Tip: Clicking the light gray text at the bottom of a shared message will jump to the original message.

Quote a message