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Teams chat retention and policies

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Teams chat retention and policies

How Teams chat messages are retained — defaults, Purview retention, eDiscovery scope, and end-user controls.

Solving Microsoft 365 · www.solvingmicrosoft365.com/guides/teams-chat-retention-and-policies

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01

Where Teams chat actually lives

Channel messages sit in the team's SharePoint site or Microsoft 365 Group; 1:1 and group chats sit in each participant's Exchange mailbox in a hidden folder.

Solving Microsoft 365 · www.solvingmicrosoft365.com/guides/teams-chat-retention-and-policies

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Default retention

Without a policy, Teams chat persists indefinitely. Mailbox retention defaults can touch 1:1 chat, but most tenants have no aggressive default.

Solving Microsoft 365 · www.solvingmicrosoft365.com/guides/teams-chat-retention-and-policies

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Purview retention scopes

Teams channel messages, Teams chats, meeting messages, and private and shared channel messages are all separately scoped — configure each on purpose.

Solving Microsoft 365 · www.solvingmicrosoft365.com/guides/teams-chat-retention-and-policies

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What users can delete

Posters can edit or delete their own messages; owners can delete any message in the team. Compliance retention overrides all of it as a preservation hold.

Solving Microsoft 365 · www.solvingmicrosoft365.com/guides/teams-chat-retention-and-policies

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eDiscovery

Fully searchable: channel messages from the underlying site, 1:1 and group chats from participant mailboxes, with conversation reconstruction in Premium eDiscovery.

Solving Microsoft 365 · www.solvingmicrosoft365.com/guides/teams-chat-retention-and-policies

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A reasonable baseline

Channel messages 7 years, 1:1 and group chats 1 year, meeting recordings 60 days — longer across the board for regulated industries.

Solving Microsoft 365 · www.solvingmicrosoft365.com/guides/teams-chat-retention-and-policies

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