Hide, Archive, and Delete chat threads!
Teams is way to cluttered when you have several chats. It is difficult to see new messages when they come in. I like a very clean and simple tool and if you could manage options that let you delete threads and also that would let you choose to clear all activity and history upon closing the App that would be great. As it is I have a bunch on inactive threads that are always in the activity list and they are old and not active any longer. Other than this I really like the UI and the functions of the Teams App just want to be able to clear all the junk when I want to.
Thanks!

Additional clarification as to what was fixed in this feature request.
This request is done except for Delete Private chat. Delete Private Chat is still Under Review and therefore will be pulled into its own topic; no decision has been made to yet if this will be done or not.
What is complete are the following:
1. Delete your own messages anywhere in Teams.
2. Team Owners can choose if users can edit/delete in their tenant as well as choose if admins have the power to delete any message posted in public channels.
3. The ability to hide your private chat threads (these are not the chat threads in channels, but the private chat threads that appear when you click the Chat icon on the left-side app bar).
4. The ability to mute your private chat threads. (these are not the chat threads in channels, but the private chat threads that appear when you click the Chat icon on the left-side app bar).
I have opened a new suggestion that targets just the ability to Delete Private Chat threads. If you want this feature, please go to this new topic and vote it up!
https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103/suggestions/33535006
-Warren
220 comments
Comments are closed-
Anonymous commented
Hiding is marginally helpful, but deletion is a necessity. Figure it out.
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Yves Rausch commented
Thanks for the update.
Delete a chat or a part of it in 1:1 is totally mandatory for every solution.
In channels it is, too, as webhook content or misleaded posts should be removeable. -
Ryan commented
The "Hide" option is not useful to me. When I bring back a chat with that person, all that history comes back. Maybe implement it as a "Clear" instead, so it clears all history in that chat from me ever seeing again. It wouldn't need to actually delete on the server, in case managers want to snoop my chats, but I want outdated conversations gone from my view forever.
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Anonymous commented
We need to be able to delete chats and messages and just as importantly, ARCHIVE. If I hide a chat, other people can still post to it and I will never know if I hide it. If I want all conversation to stop but not lose history of a chat, I need to be able to ARCHIVE.
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Paul Combetta commented
I guess you wont be able to wipe this with a cloth, or anything.
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Anonymous commented
Alex a conversation is not a message...it is a collection of messages. There could be hundreds of messages in each conversation.
The ask is to remove the entire conversation thread. Your substitute concept is inadequate. Please reinstate the requirement.
Anything that can be Created should allow for it to be Read, Updated, and Deleted. This is a universal truth for all software that is minimumly viable. Individual parts of CRUD should only be removed to meet an ask, but absent an ask the default requirement is to enable CRUD as part of MVP.
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Tony Ingall commented
Dreadful decision. What not make deletion an owner function so they can keep the environment clean or perhaps a company switch?
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Chris Webb commented
Don't know what you guys are whining about, you can as an owner still delete all messages in a channel..... But as Joe C said, this is talking about chat not Channel chats.
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Hicsy commented
@suphatra please don't shrug this off like you always do. PLEASE pass it on. It is absolute madness that we cannot delete hatespeech and every time someone points that out - you shrug it off without considering the consequences of you not passing on the very important requirement
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Hicsy commented
I repeat - this is dangerous water where we are no longer able to remove inappropriate content from our own workplace chats. please re-instate this ASAP.
@Joe C : No. This specific thread is linked to from several Microsoft forums. Originally team owners could delete messages from any source in a channel, then it was removed. Discussing the removal of admin ability to moderate their channels is met with official response: "that is by design, vote for the feature request here" and linking to this page.
Another common issue that is popping up on Microsoft forums is not being able to clean up after bots, such as the (very beta) RSS feed reader. You could have an RSS posting to a channel, such as Amazon AWS status updates... but when the RSS breaks (we don't know why, it just happens randomly) it will instead post a message every 15 minutes saying that it failed to check the RSS. So if you come back after a weekend of it failing you will be met with literally hundreds of threads from the faulty RSS reader that you cannot delete. Again, Microsoft says this is by design and specifically says to vote in THIS thread for a feature request... so no Joe C - this is not just specific to private chat.
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Anonymous commented
For all you Confluence/JIRA/Hipchat users, they just came out with Stride and that has the feature. Though, so does pretty much every other platform.
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Anonymous commented
LET US DELETE THE HISTORY OF ANY CHAT/TEAM/ MEETING
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Eli S commented
I'll bet that this uservoice.com has the ability. Just waiting for a competitor to post a message here that says: "well, our product does it now! Come on over!"
I'll bet that post gets deleted fast!
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Joe C commented
Steven M. You are aware that this has been intended to mean 1:1 personal chats and not the discrete chat threads from within Channels, no?
MS is responding with a "hide" the 1:1 chat to minimize the noise and clutter of your chat pane while resurfacing the chat when the other user contacts you again.
Deleting messages from a Team is separate feature ask then what is detailed. in the original request by Matt or being addressed by Warren and Suphatra
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Anonymous commented
The ability to delete chats is a must for this product to survive. Now that Skype for business is DOA how are we expected to implement Teams with this kind of arcane limitation.
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Steven M commented
This is a horrible design decision. Admins should be allowed to delete (or hide from ALL users) chat threads that are deemed worthy of exclusion for a wide variety of use cases. Rethink this, Microsoft. You have a great product here that is trying to break into a very competitive space. It will be hard enough to capture market share thanks to the efficacy of your competition... don't make it more difficult by intentionally hamstringing the admin's ability to control and shape the discussions occurring on it.
Our company culture is one by design and we are hyper-aware of things that may negatively impact it. I'd rather be able to use MS Teams to help us in the endeavor rather than hinder us. I hate having to work around a product rather than with it. -
Jason commented
Well done Microsoft for breaking the new GDPR law in Europe
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/uk-consumers-to-have-right-to-be-forgotten-under-data-protection-law.html
Watch the law suits flood in............. -
Anonymous commented
Not being able to delete certain posts (racist, offensive or Connector messages [Webhooks!]) will kill the usage of MS Teams in our whole company.
Bad move.
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Michael Bergermeister commented
The inability to delete your own conversations in Microsoft teams is one of the dumber moves Microsoft has made and they have made some incredibly horribly products. I guess I shouldn't be surprised and should have expected this from the beginning. I guess I will only use actual emails (slower but at least I can delete them).
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TJ Snell commented
Very unfortunate as this pretty much kills the use of Teams in our organization. We look forward to a reversal in this policy. Mind you we killed the use of Cisco's Spark for the same reason. Not sure what the logic is behind Microsoft wanting to hoard this data?