5.1. Finding, Renaming, and Deleting Chats
💡 First Principle: A chat you can't find is a chat you have to redo. Copilot keeps your chats so you can return to them, but the list grows fast and fills with auto-generated titles. Two habits, renaming what matters and deleting what shouldn't linger, turn a long scroll into a searchable record of your work.
Your Copilot chats are listed in the Chats list in the left navigation. Over time they pile up, and without good names, finding a past chat means scrolling through titles Copilot generated from your first message.
Actions available for managing chats:
| Action | How to Do It | When to Use It |
|---|---|---|
| Find a previous chat | Select it in the Chats list (use All chats to see chats from every Copilot experience) | Returning to earlier research or reusing past context |
| Rename a chat | The chat's … More menu > Rename | Making a chat findable with a descriptive name |
| Delete a chat | The chat's … More menu > Delete | Removing a chat you no longer need, or one containing content you don't want kept in your history |
| Move to notebook | The chat's … More menu > Move to notebook | Grouping a chat with related work in a notebook (5.2) |
Chat history is scoped to where you are. Since spring 2026, the chat history pane in each app shows only the chats started in that Copilot experience. In Outlook, for example, you see the chats you started in Outlook. Select All chats to see everything. Nothing is deleted by this scoping; it only filters the view. Chat history can also be filtered to narrow a long list (6.3). Results of scheduled prompts also land in your Chats list, shown in bold with an icon (4.3).
Renaming a chat changes how it's listed in your history. "Q3 Competitive Analysis – October" is far easier to find later than an auto-generated "Tell me about competitors."
Deleting a chat removes it from your chat history. Two things it does not do:
- It doesn't delete saved memories created from that chat (4.5). To remove those, use Manage saved memories.
- It doesn't place the chat outside your organization's compliance controls. Copilot interactions are business records that your organization's retention and eDiscovery policies govern (3.3).
⚠️ Exam Trap: "I can't find yesterday's chat, so it must have been deleted" is the wrong diagnosis when you're in a different app. If you started the chat in Outlook and you're now looking in Teams, the scoped pane won't show it. Switch to All chats. And remember that deleting a chat isn't the same as deleting what Copilot remembers from it.
Reflection Question: A consultant uses Copilot across several client projects. Three months later, she needs the chat where she analyzed one client's contract, but she can't find it in the pane she's looking at. What two things should she check, and what should she have done at the time to make the chat easy to find?
