cannot type a response, but selecting a preset response works

Hi @Blair, Donni 
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience in the Microsoft Q&A forum. 
If you're unable to manually type a response in Teams but can still select suggested replies, it could be due to a few different reasons. Sometimes this behavior is caused by a temporary glitch, or it might relate to messaging policies set by your organization's administrator. 

Based on research and feedback from other users, here are a few steps that may help resolve this issue: 

1.Right-click on the “Chat” section and open a new conversation, then close the new chat window. This action should restore the ability to type in the original chat. 

2.Right-click the Teams icon on the taskbar, selected Quit, and then reopened Teams. 

3.Clear your Teams cache Clear the Teams client cache - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn 
4.Reinstall Teams 

If the issue is due to administrative policies, we recommend reaching out to your IT department for assistance. Chat functionality may have been disabled via your team’s messaging policy, which is managed in the Microsoft Teams admin center. 
Reference: i am not able to type anything in the chat box - Microsoft Community 

I hope this helps. 

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