Delete Private Chat threads
This request is for the ability to completely delete a private chat thread. (Not hide/archive.)
Again, this was pulled out into its own topic because it is still under review and no decision has been made.
To recap what has already been completed from the other topic:
- Delete your own messages anywhere in Teams.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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).
This topic deserves consideration and separating out hot items is something we have often done. Please don't think of this as an attempt to diminish the ask, we know that many people want this.
Thank you for your understanding and feedback.
-Warren
Warren
shared this idea
Thank you for your feedback! The team has finalized the designs for this feature request, and work is planned to begin shortly. We will share an update as soon as one is available.
2067 comments
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Anonymous
commented
as new user of teams, imagine how nice it is to do meeting where you share your desktop, and you forget that your teams chat is up. Just imagine the conversations that you don't want to be seen by some people, even for a few seconds. I should be able as a user to delete my entire chat conversation or not.
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Magdi Elsayed
commented
I second Stuart's comment on August 25th, 2021. We have implemented the supervised chat policy, which is very useful and allows us to keep the chat functionality of Teams available for quick communication between students and teachers, or groups of students provided a teacher is also in the chat. However, it is not applied retroactively to chats that students already had open before applying the policy. The policy mechanism needs to do the same for chats that are already open, with the same error message popping up to the student and only allowing new messages to be added to the chat if a teacher, or "Full Permissions" user is brought into the chat.
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Stuart Gray
commented
Agree with comments below that we need a roadmap/timeline of this release for planning purposes.
"Supervised Chat" has been released to restrict student use of Private chat in Teams to require a staff member present, but without a way to delete old chat threads, this functionality is useless for school boards/districts that previously had chat enabled for students.
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S. Loggins
commented
Last year, I was concerned more about privacy. But at this point, I would just like to delete old messages so the application itself isn't so SLOW.
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Firas
commented
Will the administrators have the ability to delete private chats of the users?
What is the roadmap for this feature?
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Guillaume HOARAU
commented
Teams is available for everybody now and with my personal email (@msn.com) i can delete chats xD
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Naz
commented
Deleting a chat or thread should have been a default feature of MST. Could you please add this in as soon as possible.
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GOLDEN FEEDBACK
commented
Due to ignorance, some in comments are asking: Is this feature really important? (as there is a hide chat feature already in Teams)
The answer is, it is crucial. I am not an IT networking expert, but at least I know the basics.
Why is this constantly being ignored since many years?
It is because, Microsoft staff is afraid and is frequently citing legal and compliance reasons, and will continue to simply assure the users that this request is being worked on.1. Okay, everyone knows that in almost every organization, all data gets backed up on servers, cloud, SharePoint, etc (including Teams data). This is absolutely FINE, keep it there on powerful servers, for legal and compliance reasons, for admin e-discovery, audit, etc.
But please spare the standard work laptops (local device resources and memory). Most can open the task manager in Windows and check for themselves, if they think I am lying, on how Teams impacts system resources and other running apps, even in devices with good specifications.
2. Assume I have to search a unique word in just a dozen chats in Teams, but I have 100 other temporary irrelevant chats, then Teams scans ALL, archived or hidden chats, and it freezes or takes forever to show the result.
If we can DELETE irrelevant chats, instead of archiving or hiding (which uses memory and system resources) then both the application and the device will have improved performance.
3. Also, in case of migrating teams to another device or reinstalling on same device, it will be significantly faster and responsive, without having to copy 10,000 irrelevant chats (if any) from local device backup or server backup which wastes time, resources and even internet bandwidth, costs.
So, keep all the employees info, chat info, stories, shared files info on powerful servers/cloud, shared folders, etc; but allow the chats deletion on local device, and for LOVE'S SAKE, don't portray this as 'hard delete', rather consider it just like a 'clear cache' by deleting temporary chats at the device level.
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S
commented
A user Emmaline commented below: Highlighted the ongoing assurance since more than 1 year... I will use the same message to reiterate, as it is very clear and factual, couldn't have said better:
Dear Alex and Team,
I really don't understand why it has to take this long to finalise a decision for users to have the ability to delete chats and group chats? This is such a SIMPLE request (compared to the many complex ones out there!) and considering the volume of requests and votes by users submitted to have this feature, and this has been suggested since last year, you would think this should have been enabled by this time.Just so we're clear, we don't just want the ability to hide or mute chat threads, but the ability to DELETE ANY chat, group or channel thread created by ourselves ANYWHERE on Teams.
Please please action this feature soon!
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Kirk
commented
I'm still kind of stunned that this isn't "standard" functionality. From a mergers and acquisition standpoint this would be a nightmare!
Seeing as I'm not in M & A but a lowly IT Manager trying to migrate from an old Tenant to a new Tenant this is a nightmare. Especially considering that the available tools out there do not "delta update" the Private Chat segment of Teams!!
While Teams is a very useful tool the administration leaves a TON to be desired. How about "we" expedite a feature as simple as DELETE. Thanks!
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Anonymous
commented
So there is a work around to do this. Install desktop power automate, run the recorder and make a loop. Worked for me!
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Anonymous
commented
Unbelievable, this really is a simple piece of engineering. The team was 'in the process of finalizing designs for deleting private chat threads' in June 2020. One year on and 'the team has finalized the designs for this feature request, and work is planned to begin shortly.' Two more months have elapsed with no progress - not sure how Microsoft define 'shortly'.
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Emmeline
commented
Dear Alex and Team,
I really don't understand why it has to take this long to finalise a decision for users to have the ability to delete chats and group chats? This is such a SIMPLE request (compared to the many complex ones out there!) and considering the volume of requests and votes by users submitted to have this feature, and this has been suggested since last year, you would think this should have been enabled by this time.Just so we're clear, we don't just want the ability to hide or mute chat threads, but the ability to DELETE ANY chat, group or channel thread created by ourselves ANYWHERE on Teams.
Please please action this feature soon!
Thanks and Regards.
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Rene Rasmussen
commented
I just hope this will also be available thorugh the Graph API.
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Anonymous
commented
Deleting is not a new technique. I do not think that this function has been forgotten, rather the "keeping of all data" is intended to collect and evaluate data by someone outside the user's control. That borders on surveillance or phishing of information.
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Anonymous
commented
It's been 6 weeks since "the team has finalized the designs," so what's going on? I would expect to wait 6 weeks for updates to a homemade / free WordPress plugin developed by just one person working alone. What's the excuse for a world-class software company with a large pool of the world's best programmers at its disposal?
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Anonymous
commented
When will this be completed? Teams is very messy and cleaning the previous chat history is essential, rather than just hiding this
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Ivey West
commented
No idea why people "NEED" this so much. Who cares about chats at the bottom of a list you're never going to scroll to the bottom of?
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Anonymous
commented
We just made the mistake of going to TEAMS, got some test messages and now you are telling me I'm STUCK with them FOREVER! What a piece of junk, but then what would I expect from the brains at Microsoft!
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Przemek Malik
commented
This functionality is totally pointless in my opinion from the very beginning. I don't see any idea in remaining this information. If I want delete message, I want it dissapears, not change in other message...