Forum Discussion
Sophie_Bruehl
Jul 20, 2021Iron Contributor
What´s the reason that I can´t delete chats
Does anybody know why it is not pssible to delete old chats?
- Jul 20, 2021
Hello there Sophie_Bruehl
The truth is that you can't delete old chats, this is what we call "by-design". There’s no option to delete a full chat in Microsoft Teams. But you should be able to delete or edit your own messages.
What you can right now, are the following options:
- Deleting a single chat message on Microsoft Teams- Hiding the chat: Hiding a chat keeps it out of your way on Teams. To hide a chat, right-click on the chat name, and click hide. Once you hide the chat, it only shows up again when someone sends a new message to it. You can also bring the chat back by searching for a participant’s name or the chat in your search box. Right-click on the chat and choose to unhide to see it again.
- Muting the chat: You can also mute a chat if you’re sure you don’t want to hear from it again. You’ll still be in the conversation when you mute a chat but won’t receive notifications. Right-click the chat and choose the mute option. You can then hide the chat, too if you like. Right-click and click unmute to receive notifications again.
If you’re worried about long-term chat archives, you can check your admin settings. Teams chat, file, and channel information is saved indefinitely by default on Teams. You can change retention policies in the Microsoft 365 compliance center.
When you set a retention policy for Teams, you can choose which information you keep. Your policy will allow you to:
- Retain Teams messages for a specific period then delete it
- Delete Teams chats or channel messages after a specific duration.Last but not least, you can vote on the UserVoice for this feature to come out as soon as possible - the posts with more votes, get more attention for the backend/design team.
Some examples here for this "delete chat feature": https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/41353873-delete-chat-conversations ; https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/40870207-delete-chat ; https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/41461267-delete-chat-message
Hope this helps 🙂
Sep 09, 2021
deegeepee You cannot delete a whole chat conversation right now but as a team owner with a team setting "owner can delete messages" the owner/owners can delete all messages from all users, the users can also be allowed to delete their posted messages. Anyway, it's is controlled by CsTeamsMessagingPolicy and with further granular control using Set-Team (if the setting is checked or not). Besides that you can use retention policies to delete data, for some users or all, for chats, for channel messages, and private channel messages.
CaiiqefAprisco
Sep 23, 2021Copper Contributor
can I do this without an Azure subscription?
I only want to delete chats but it seems Microsoft don't allow me to do it..
- Sep 23, 2021With Teams free you get Azure AD Free. You can only delete your own chats/posts using Teams free as the policies controlling owner deletion of messages in a team are not included in Teams free.