Why did my idea disappear from the Microsoft Feedback portal?

Individual feedback items on feedbackportal.microsoft.com age out 15 months after they are created. Microsoft stated this in a 2023 response on the portal's own forum. Votes and comments go with the item. It was not removed for breaking any rules.

Which feedback survives longer than 15 months?

Collections: merged groups of feedback that Microsoft employees curate. Of the Collections on the portal on 26 October 2026, 4 008 were created in 2023 and 147 since the start of 2024.

Is the 15-month limit documented?

Not on Microsoft Learn. The Learn article on giving feedback says only that Microsoft will not delete data outside its data retention policies. The 15-month figure appears in Microsoft's replies on the Feedback (web portal) forum.

Your Microsoft feedback expires after 15 months.

Post an idea on Microsoft's Feedback portal, collect votes, wait. Fifteen months later the idea is gone, with its votes and comments. Nobody tells you. The only ideas that outlive the clock are the ones a Microsoft employee has curated into a Collection, and that has nearly stopped happening.

108 624ideas on the portal on 26 October 2026

≈219expire every day. That's about 9 an hour.

22 July 2025where the surviving individual ideas begin

feedbackportal.microsoft.com / Planner

Need Full Graph API Support for Premium Plans

41 days

until this idea is due to expire on or about 7 December 2026. It has 86 votes and no response from Microsoft. Its predecessor in the Microsoft Graph forum, posted in October 2024 with roughly 80 votes, already went the same way.

The secret expiration rule

The Learn article on how to give feedback to Microsoft tells you to search for existing ideas and "add your voice to the existing feedback rather than creating a copy of it." It lists twelve statuses your idea could reach. On retention it says only that Microsoft won't delete this data "outside of our data retention policies."

What those policies are, you have to dig out of the portal itself. A user asked in 2023 why feedback disappears, and Microsoft answered:

Feedback portal post 'Why does some feedback disappear after fifteen months?', with an official Microsoft response: 'In order to adhere to privacy, security, and compliance regulations, feedback records older than 15 months age out of the Feedback web portal. However, feedback that has been moved into a Collection can still have these curated collections live on.' — The official Microsoft response, posted in the portal's own Feedback (web portal) forum three years ago. 8 votes.

The data agrees. On 26 October 2026, individual ideas in every forum start on 22 July 2025, fifteen months back. Apart from 8 stragglers, every older item still visible is a Collection. Advice to vote on the existing idea rather than post a new one only works if the existing idea is still there.

2023: the year somebody was curating

Collections are the escape hatch, and someone at Microsoft has to build them. Of the 4 605 Collections on the portal on 26 October 2026, 4 008 were created in 2023. All the years since have added 147 between them. Nobody is maintaining the escape hatch any more, so the 15-month rule now applies to almost everything.

Collections created per year, all 68 forums. Six forums with more than 5,000 ideas are sampled at 5,000 rows, so their counts are a floor.

The odds of being heard

1 in 96individual ideas has any status other than "Open": 718 of the 68 925 we looked at (1.04%). Most of the statuses on the portal belong to the old Collections.

1 in 5 744individual ideas has a written response that isn't an automated system message. That's 12 in total.

0 of 5 236Microsoft To Do ideas have been marked as anything at all. The to-do app's own to-do list has nothing done. It was the same story in April 2025.

Who's listening

Responsiveness is a team habit, not a portal feature. A few teams move ideas along: new Outlook and Edge mark a noticeable share of theirs. Windows 365 mostly marks them closed. Many others leave every single idea at "Open". Across every forum, 3 276 of 108 624 ideas (3.0%) carry any status. Here are the 15 biggest forums.

Forum	Ideas now	Collections	Individual ideas with a status
XBOX Player Voice	19 458	1*	2 of 4 999* (0.0%)
Microsoft Teams	18 449	1 241*	6 of 3 759* (0.2%)
Outlook	8 016	815*	109 of 4 185* (2.6%)
Excel	7 587	212*	6 of 4 788* (0.1%)
Word	6 329	556*	4 of 4 444* (0.1%)
Microsoft To Do	5 236	0*	0 of 5 000* (0.0%)
Microsoft 365 Copilot app	4 898	0	20 of 4 898 (0.4%)
OneDrive	4 334	2	0 of 4 331 (0.0%)
SharePoint	4 097	1	1 of 4 096 (0.0%)
OneNote	3 970	16	11 of 3 954 (0.3%)
Outlook (new)	3 460	30	234 of 3 430 (6.8%)
Windows App	2 304	15	0 of 2 289 (0.0%)
PowerPoint	1 938	12	1 of 1 926 (0.1%)
Loop	1 587	7	2 of 1 580 (0.1%)
Microsoft Forms	1 492	1 003	0 of 489 (0.0%)

Show the other forums

Whiteboard	1 164	55	0 of 1 109 (0.0%)
Planner	1 157	1	1 of 1 156 (0.1%)
Feedback (web portal)	1 069	215	1 of 854 (0.1%)
Microsoft Intune	928	0	0 of 928 (0.0%)
Microsoft Edge	907	136	163 of 771 (21.1%)
Microsoft Teams (free)	884	16	0 of 868 (0.0%)
Exchange Online	861	0	1 of 860 (0.1%)
Outlook.com	738	202	1 of 536 (0.2%)
Microsoft Copilot for Service	646	0	0 of 646 (0.0%)
Bookings	578	0	0 of 578 (0.0%)
Microsoft Lists	540	0	0 of 540 (0.0%)
Bing	504	0	0 of 496 (0.0%)
Azure OpenAI Studio	428	0	0 of 428 (0.0%)
Copilot for Sales	404	1	0 of 402 (0.0%)
Microsoft Access	367	11	0 of 356 (0.0%)
Microsoft Rewards	297	0	0 of 297 (0.0%)
Microsoft Graph	285	0	2 of 285 (0.7%)
Communication Compliance	282	0	0 of 280 (0.0%)
Clipchamp	279	35	2 of 243 (0.8%)
Windows 365 Cloud PC	265	2	112 of 263 (42.6%)
Microsoft Defender XDR	249	0	2 of 249 (0.8%)
Data Loss Prevention	243	0	0 of 243 (0.0%)
Microsoft 365 Admin Center – Copilot Agent Management	224	0	0 of 224 (0.0%)
Microsoft Viva Engage	202	0	0 of 202 (0.0%)
Visio	198	0	0 of 198 (0.0%)
Microsoft Information Protection	172	3	0 of 169 (0.0%)
Microsoft Education Apps	155	0	2 of 155 (1.3%)
Microsoft Configuration Manager	149	5	0 of 144 (0.0%)
Data Lifecycle and Records Management	116	0	0 of 116 (0.0%)
Launcher	108	0	0 of 108 (0.0%)
Windows Autopatch	108	0	0 of 108 (0.0%)
Microsoft Family Safety	101	0	1 of 101 (1.0%)
Bing IME	98	0	0 of 97 (0.0%)
Microsoft 365 Lighthouse	91	0	0 of 91 (0.0%)
Skype	80	0	0 of 80 (0.0%)
Exchange Server	77	0	0 of 77 (0.0%)
Project	63	0	0 of 63 (0.0%)
Insider Risk Management	63	0	0 of 62 (0.0%)
Microsoft Edge Game Assist	60	0	34 of 60 (56.7%)
Microsoft Create	52	0	0 of 52 (0.0%)
Microsoft Viva Insights	40	0	0 of 40 (0.0%)
Calendar Companion	39	0	0 of 38 (0.0%)
Sway	34	0	0 of 34 (0.0%)
Microsoft Editor Browser Extension	29	0	0 of 28 (0.0%)
Microsoft Stream	28	12	0 of 16 (0.0%)
Microsoft Viva Connections	27	0	0 of 27 (0.0%)
Microsoft Viva Amplify	23	0	0 of 23 (0.0%)
Microsoft Viva Learning	17	0	0 of 17 (0.0%)
eDiscovery	10	0	0 of 10 (0.0%)
Enterprise Learner Assist	9	0	0 of 9 (0.0%)
Microsoft Viva Glint	9	0	0 of 9 (0.0%)
Hugging Face on Microsoft Foundry	7	0	0 of 7 (0.0%)
Microsoft Viva Goals	5	0	0 of 4 (0.0%)

* Forum has more than 5,000 ideas. The portal's API returns at most 5,000 rows, so these columns come from a 5,000-row sample. Totals come from the forum's own counter. Download: forums.csv.

Expiring soon

About 5 680 ideas reach the 15-month mark in the next 30 days, carrying roughly 35 600 votes between them. These are the most-voted of the ideas due to go in the next 60 days. Voting won't save them. Only curation does.

Idea	Forum	Votes	Expires on or about
integrate with outlook calendar	Microsoft To Do	702	21 Nov 2026
Show more Date&Time suggestions for Reminder	Microsoft To Do	641	13 Nov 2026
Open email links in outlook app not outlook web	Microsoft To Do	343	04 Nov 2026
Align Microsoft Graph, Microsoft 365 Admin APIs & Entra ID APIs and other API´s for Consistent Access	Microsoft Graph	240	29 Nov 2026
Intune support for shared-pc mode and DEM accounts on Linux clients	Microsoft Intune	234	19 Dec 2026
Enable user to copy full link from the chat itself rather copying each link individually, since new update only partially displays the long URLs	Microsoft Teams	220	15 Dec 2026
How do I get rid of the "unlock Premium" button?	Microsoft Teams	194	14 Dec 2026
Add due dates/times and reminder date/times to task steps	Microsoft To Do	154	31 Oct 2026
Let Us Turn Off Reading Pane	Outlook	152	06 Nov 2026
Add Recurring Tasks	Planner	146	01 Nov 2026
Edit Message Function	Outlook	127	04 Dec 2026
Template or Duplicate	Microsoft To Do	121	29 Oct 2026
Remove "Unlock Premium" button for users without license	Microsoft Teams	118	15 Dec 2026
Don't cancel MS Publisher	Word	106	01 Nov 2026
Feature Suggestion – Folder-Level Recycle Bin in SharePoint Online and OneDrive	SharePoint	106	05 Nov 2026

Even the insiders get caught out

The 30-year veteran

David E. Craig has worked at Microsoft since 1994, by his own account. In October 2024 he hit a wall: POST /planner/tasks returns 403 on Planner Premium plans while reads work fine. He documented it on Microsoft Q&A, then filed it on the Feedback portal, where it gathered roughly 80 votes. When it vanished, the follow-up idea he posted said it had been "deleted with NO FEEDBACK". It hadn't been deleted. It had expired.

Why not just ping someone internally? His answer in his blog comments:

"I do have some contacts and can find my way to the right people, but I am also avoiding a conflict of interest. The Planner issue is one of those. I have to let it play out on the global stage and let the issue present itself organically."

So the person with the most direct line in chose the public channel on principle. The public channel has a 15-month memory.

The 34 missing suggestions

Daniel Pineault, a long-time Microsoft Access MVP, went through 34 of his own suggestions in early 2026. Every one of them was gone. His follow-up was titled "The Purge Is Complete!"

He was right about the effect and wrong only about the intent. It wasn't a purge. It's a scheduled job that has apparently been running for years, without a word about it in the documentation he'd naturally check.

So what do you do with your next idea?

Treat the portal as a mailbox, not an archive. Keep your own copy of the text, the link and the vote count. If the issue matters past 15 months, link to it from somewhere that doesn't forget: a Q&A thread, a community post, your own blog. When an idea of yours gets close to its date and still matters, the only documented way to keep it is a Collection. You can ask for one in the Feedback (web portal) forum. Just don't expect that request to outlive the clock either.

Not every Microsoft feedback site works like this. The Power Platform ideas sites run on different software and appear to keep older ideas around. The 15-month rule belongs to the main Feedback portal.

How these numbers were made

All figures come from the public Feedback portal on 26 October 2026, read through the same JSON endpoints the portal's own web page uses, as an anonymous visitor. Nothing was posted, voted or signed in.

Idea totals come from each forum's own counter. Status counts come from status-filtered queries.
The portal's API returns at most 5,000 rows per forum, so forums above that (XBOX Player Voice, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Excel, Word, Microsoft To Do) are sampled at 5,000 rows. Their Collection and individual-idea figures are from that sample.
"Individual idea" means anything that isn't a Collection. "With a status" means any status other than "Open".
Expiry dates are the posting date plus 15 calendar months. On 26 October 2026 the oldest surviving individual idea was from 22 July 2025, so the job seems to run within a few days of the 15-month mark. 8 older individual ideas have somehow survived out of roughly 69,000. Every system has its exceptions. Per-day and 30-day figures are estimates scaled up for the sampled forums.
The comparison with 2025 comes from Microsoft's feedback maze (April 2025), whose figures were also a 15-month window plus Collections, though we didn't know that then.

Corrections are welcome by email or on LinkedIn.