How to permanently delete a Microsoft Teams channel

[Mike Dumka]

Hi there, 

I am aware that once you delete a teams channel, it gets put into a 'place' where it can be restored by end users for 21 days.

But for teams that have a high channel usage is there a way to manually bypass that 21 days and permanently delete the channel faster so they can stay within their 200 channel limit?

Thanks! 

[#2]

@Mike Dumka Hi, as far as I know you can only "soft delete" and wait the 21 days. If nothing has changed recently.

[#3]

@ChristianBergstrom Thanks buddy ... Yeah, I am looking to speed up that soft-delete phase if we can through something like PowerShell. I know this is real edge case type stuff, but surprisingly the business requirements make sense on this one. 

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Hi, did a search but it seems as we still need to wait for an option to ”hard delete”. Not mentioned in the docs either. Noticed several UV requests and this is one of them.

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/35662282-permanently-delete-a-...

[#5]

@ChristianBergstrom Thanks, Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything 🙂

Stay safe out there!

[#6]

@Mike Dumka 

I have just come across the same issue where a client created a channel called Service as a shared channel instead of a private channel. Deleting the channel will take 21 days to purge, preventing them from creating a new "service" channel as a private channel. I decided to restore the deleted channel. Once the original "service" channel was restored, I renamed the channel in teams and then re-deleted the channel. I was then able to create a new channel with the same name, "Service", and make it a private channel upon creation. The old shared "service" channel can now sit in the deleted stage 2 recycling bin and be purged after 21 days.