How to view FULL chat history in Teams?

Question

This is a very common question that is being asked, and no realistic (non-convoluted) answer has been provided yet.

Our chat tab only has a section with "recent" under it. That means any chats that we had from 6+ weeks ago seemingly disappeared forever. Please make it such that we can see our full chat history for reference … easily.

• computer science teacher, Brett.

Answer 1

Yes, believe it or not, it would be more convenient to view our entire chat history directly within Teams.

I will do as you say and give feedback on this "UsreVoice" forum and hope that they see it.

• Brett

Answer 2

Hello Brett,

Based on your description, I did a lot of tests and research about Teams chat history, first I'd like to share with you that the Teams chat history would be restored in the Office 365 server forever by default, so you don't need worry about the chat history missing, thanks.

And as far as I know the Office 365 global admin can try to use the Office 365 Content Search to get the details about the Chat history in Teams and then export the search results to check them.  If you are the gloal admin, you can go to Office 365 Security& Compliance Admin Center > Search > Content Search > Guided Search, after that apply more sepcific conditions to query search results. The chat results would show Type: IM, and call would be show as Tyoe:call.  For more details, please refer to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/content-search.

Here is my test result preview page, you can also export all the results to double check it.  For your reference 

If you have any other concern, please feel free to let me know, thanks.

Regards,

Oliver

Answer 3

Hello Brett,

If you have any other concern, please feel free to let me know, thanks.

Regards,

Oliver

Answer 4

Thanks, but no:

• I am not a "gloal admin", I am simply a user of Microsoft Teams.
• Even if I was, I still don't know how you got to this "Office 365 Security& Compliance Admin Center". I see no button for it in Microsoft Teams. Nor do I want to search for anything, I merely want to view my chat history.

Please report this rather important functionality to your coders, thanks.

• Brett

Answer 5

Hello Brett,

Thanks for your reply with patience.

If you are a normal Office 365 user and you want to check the Teams history, you can try to contact your golbal admin to help you, and the Teams chat history can be searched in the Office 365 Security& Compliance Admin Center, and you don't worry about the chat history disappeared. For your reference https://protection.office.com/ > Search> Content Search > Guided Search.

On another hand, we do understand if the end user can directly view the Whole teams chat history in Teams, it would be more convenient and suitable for your daily life and work. So if the search cannot meet your requirements and you concerned about it, it is recommended that please give a feedback to Microsoft Teams UsreVoice and then leave your good ideas there. The dedicated develop engineers in Microsoft will keep monitoring customers feedback and good ideas there, some feature would be added into the product based on customers good ideas in the future, and your good ideas and patience will be very helpful for them to improve the product, thanks.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated.

Regards,

Oliver