IT and Library Services

Teams Maintenance: Deleting Chats, Channels and Teams

Stay on top of your Teams with regular maintenance. Remove unwanted channels and posts and, where appropriate, delete entire Teams you no longer need.

Keeping Control of your Teams

Keeping data in the right place, for the right amount of time, is just as important in Teams. The tips below will help you stay on top of your Teams and the information stored in them.

Delete Messages in Private Chat

Private conversations and Teams Chats can be edited or deleted individually by the message author. It is not possible to clear an entire channel's history, or delete messages from other users.

Delete a Channel

Team owners get to decide which team members can delete and restore channels.

Tip: If you're considering deleting a channel because you're being inundated by notifications about new messages, you can instead just turn off notifications.

Delete a Team

To delete a team you must be the team owner. Before you delete the team, check whether any of the files or information in the Team need to be saved, either for operational purposes or to comply with our Information and Records Retention Schedules.

Remember:

  • Deleting a team removes the team mailbox and calendar from Microsoft Exchange.
  • The corresponding SharePoint site and all Team files will also be deleted.
  • And any OneNote notebook, Planner plan, Power BI workspace, or Stream group affiliated with the team will also be deleted.

When you are ready to remove the content, follow these instructions to delete the team.

Team owners and IT admins can recover deleted teams for up to 30 days. For more information, see Restore a deleted Microsoft 365 Group.

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