HTML tags showing in user input ( issue in Teams chat)

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Posted on by CU28040802-0

Hi everyone,

I’m facing an issue in Copilot Studio (Teams channel) and need some guidance.

When a user sends a message sometimes is shows <div> tag:
Thanks

the bot displays it exactly as (from users end):
<div>Thanks</div>
instead of rendering or converting it to plain text (Thanks).

So essentially, HTML tags from user input are not being sanitized or stripped, and they appear directly in the chat.

Setup:

Topic is triggered using “A message is received”
Response is sent using a Message node
We are not using Adaptive Cards and need to continue with Message node only

What I’ve checked so far:

This is user input, not something generated from the bot response
The issue occurs in the Teams channel
I’m not explicitly adding any HTML formatting in my topic or flow

Categories:

Building Copilot Studio chatbots in Microsoft Teams

Publish & channel management

Topic creation & management

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Sunil Kumar Pashikanti 2,318 Moderator on at

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Hi @CU28040802-0,

This happens because Teams sends some user messages as HTML, and Copilot Studio does not sanitize or render HTML in Message nodes. The raw tags (like <div>) are passed through as plain text. This is expected behavior in the Teams channel. If you need clean text, you’ll need to strip HTML tags yourself before sending the response.

One option you may try: Strip HTML yourself
Use a small cleanup step before sending the response.
If you’re using a flow / tool call:

Remove tags using a regex or replace logic
Conceptually:
remove <...> tags > keep inner text

Even a simple replace for common tags (<div>, </div>) often solves 90% of cases.

✅ If this answer helped resolve your issue, please mark it as Accepted so it can help others with the same problem.
👍 Feel free to Like the post if you found it useful.

Sunil Kumar Pashikanti, Moderator
Blog: https://sunilpashikanti.com/posts/

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Sayali-MSFT Microsoft Employee on at

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Hello @CU28040802-0,
In Microsoft Teams, bot messages (including those handled via Copilot Studio) do not support HTML rendering. User input is passed to the bot as plain text via the Bot Framework, and Copilot Studio does not automatically sanitize or strip HTML tags. As a result, any HTML-like input (e.g., <div>Thanks</div>) is treated as literal text and displayed as-is in the chat. This is expected behavior by design for security and consistency reasons.

Use a replace expression in your topic:
Example:
Substitute( Substitute(userInput, "<div>", ""), "</div>", "")

For broader cleanup (basic approach):
Substitute(Substitute(Substitute(...)))

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