Find old chat

Dear @Max R, 

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.   

May I ask, are you looking to find the group chat itself that you joined in late March 2025, or are you looking for specific messages from before July 2025 within that chat? 

Please help me confirm. Also, are you using the Teams app or Teams on the web? Have you checked both yet? 

Scenario 1: You are trying to find the group chat you joined in late March 2025.  

Do you happen to remember the name of any other member in that group chat?  

If so, try typing their name into the search bar. The groups that you and that member share should appear in the results below. 

(Sometimes Teams can lag and not display results properly. You can try reloading the app or browser multiple times, or type the name of a participant, then click View all results, switch to the Messages tab, and try scrolling down to find for that group.)

Scenario 2: You have already found the group chat but want to find messages from before July 2025 within it.  

First, I want to ensure those messages are still present in the group. Please try this: Click into the conversation in that group chat > press Ctrl+A then Ctrl+C > open Word and press Ctrl+V. 

At the very top of the Word file where you pasted the content, it should show the earliest chat entries. Please check the timestamp to see what month is displayed. 

If the date is before July, it means the messages are still there. In this case, copy a keyword of text from that timeframe in the Word file, go back to the group chat, press Ctrl+F, and paste that keyword to see if it appears. 

If it shows the result 'We could not find any results in this chat', please let me know whether you are using the Teams app or web so I can provide the next steps. 

For example, when I use Teams web, I sometimes search for a keyword like 'SharePoint' and initially get the error 'We could not find any results in this chat.' However, after I reload the page, the search results for 'SharePoint' appear correctly. 

Please let me know exactly what you are looking for and which version of Teams you are using so I can provide the most relevant steps for your situation. 

Looking forward to your response! 

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment". 

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To find old chats in Microsoft Teams, especially if you're looking for messages from a specific date like late March 2025, you can use the Microsoft Search API to search through your Teams chat messages. Here’s a general approach you can take:

1. Use the Search API: You can query the Teams chat messages using a search string that includes relevant keywords or phrases from the chat you are trying to find. For example, you could search for keywords that were discussed in the chat. Here’s a sample request to search for messages containing a specific string:

      POST https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/search/query
      Content-Type: application/json
      
      {
        "requests": [
          {
            "entityTypes": [
              "chatMessage"
            ],
            "query": {
              "queryString": "your search term"
            },
            "from": 0,
            "size": 25
          }
        ]
      }
   

   Replace "your search term" with keywords from the chat.
2. Check Your Filters: Ensure that you are not applying any filters that might exclude older messages. If you have set a date range, make sure it includes the time frame you are interested in.
3. Review Deleted Messages: If the chat messages were deleted, they might not be retrievable unless they were retained under a compliance policy. Check with your IT administrator if there are any retention policies in place that might affect message availability.

If you continue to have trouble finding the messages, consider reaching out to your IT support team for further assistance, as they may have additional tools or access to help you recover old chats.

References:

• Use the Microsoft Search API to search Teams messages