What´s the reason that I can´t delete chats

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 🙂