What you need to know
- Microsoft Teams will soon support archiving specific channels.
- At the moment, it's possible to archive an entire team but not individual channels.
- Support for archiving channels could ship as soon as December 2023, but that date is subject to change.
Microsoft Teams is about to get a feature that will help it catch up to its competitors. The app will soon support archiving channels, giving users and admins a better way to manage older and unused content within Teams. Currently, you can archive teams within Microsoft Teams but you cannot archive specific channels.
Archiving channels will allow people to close discussion on a specific topic. Restoring archived channels will be an option for admins and owners, so people will be able to retrieve their old channels for record keeping or to spark up conversation again.
The Microsoft 365 Roadmap outlines the upcoming change:
"With Archive Channels, owners and administrators can archive channels that are no longer in use while preserving their content, including messages, files, and tabs. The archived channel is removed from the active teams and channels list and no more actions will be allowed. If needed, the channel can be restored."
The roadmap entry notes that the feature could roll out as soon as December 2023. But dates on the roadmap are subject to change, so we may not get the ability to archive channels until a later date.
When the option does ship, it will be available for the desktop and web versions of Microsoft Teams. The roadmap entry doesn't mention similar functionality rolling out to iOS or Android.
