Official documentation checked October 14, 2026.
For organizational Microsoft Copilot, conversation history and compliance retention are not the same setting. Users can manage visible history, while authorized administrators use Microsoft Purview to control retained interaction records. There is no verified universal 30-day default or 1-to-90-day Copilot retention menu of the kind previously described in this article.
This guide is for work or school accounts. Personal Microsoft-account history controls are a separate workflow and do not configure your organization’s retention policy.
Identify Which Information You Need to Keep
List the records in scope: the conversation, generated work saved to a document, the source files, audit metadata, or personalization information. A policy for one is not proof that the others follow the same lifetime.
Microsoft’s Copilot retention documentation describes compliance copies of prompts and responses stored through backend mailbox processes. Those records are assessed through compliance tools, not by looking for every message in the app. Holds and applicable retention can prevent permanent deletion.
For a business retention requirement, ask the records owner to define the approved period and what should happen afterward. Do not choose “never delete” or an arbitrary short period merely because it appears convenient.
Configure the Organizational Policy in Purview
Use an account with the required Purview permissions and licensing. Under Solutions > Data Lifecycle Management > Policies > Retention policies, follow the current retention-policy procedure and inspect the Microsoft Copilot experiences location and intended user scope.
Choose the approved retention/deletion behavior, save it and check its distribution status. Deployment can take time; an immediate screenshot of old history is not a reliable failure test. Existing combined Teams-and-Copilot policies also need review during the transition to separate locations.
Do not look for a general Copilot > Data sources > Conversation history retention menu. Do not claim that an updated policy affects only new conversations: retention-policy changes can also apply to content already governed by that policy. Assess the impact on existing records before approval.
Understand What Users Can Change
In the current Copilot Chat history interface, a user can return to a conversation and use its menu to manage it. Deleting a conversation from visible history is different from selecting an organization-wide retention period. Personalization or memory controls answer another question again: how previous information is used, not how every compliance record is preserved.
For an approved request to clear work-account activity history, Microsoft documents My Account > Data and Privacy > Data options > Copilot activity history. Read the confirmation carefully: the deletion request covers the listed Copilot app activities, rather than an invented per-app retention preference. It can take time and does not erase changes already saved into a document.
Do not perform history deletion simply to test an administrative policy, especially during an investigation or preservation obligation.
Investigate Unexpected Retention or Missing History
If a chat remains visible, verify the correct account, policy scope, distribution status and processing time. If a chat disappears, investigate the user’s action and app history before concluding that the retained record is gone. An authorized reviewer can use eDiscovery to investigate the relevant interaction records.
When several preservation rules apply, do not assume that the shortest period overrides everything. Microsoft’s retention principles prioritize retention over ordinary deletion and resolve overlapping settings according to documented rules. Legal holds and exceptional cleanup processes require separate authorized review.
Do not exclude Copilot from a policy or remove a hold to make a conversation disappear. Also do not use a supposed “Delete all conversation history” tenant button as a forced policy refresh.
Keep a Practical Retention Verification Record
For a pilot, record the policy name, covered users and experience, intended retention action, distribution result and a harmless test interaction’s date and identifier. Separately record what the user sees and what the authorized compliance search finds.
Before rollout, confirm how the help desk should explain visible-history deletion, saved documents and compliance preservation. Recheck the policy after a material scope or product change. The reliable result is a documented policy with evidence of its intended scope—not a claim that every screen, source file and backend record is deleted at the same instant.