Two conversations in my ChatGPT project have become inaccessible:
One started as an ordinary chat and continued in Work. It now stops near the beginning, precisely at the assistant’s message “I’ve moved this into a Work chat…” The substantial conversation after that is missing.
The other was created entirely in Work. It has disappeared from the project and search results.
Has anyone else experienced this pattern or recovered the missing conversations?
Environment and troubleshooting
I use ChatGPT Plus on macOS, in both the desktop app and browser. I noticed the disappearance after an update on September 15, 2026, although I cannot establish that the update caused it.
I checked the project, history search, and Work Recents. Signing out and back in did not help. I have not used Reset ChatGPT Work. I don’t have steps that reliably reproduce the disappearance.
The missing content wasn’t found in my data export either
All 806 conversation records across the export’s nine conversation files were searched, including all exported message branches, and the missing chats were not there.
This does not establish that the conversations were deleted. Does anyone know whether account exports include Work conversations and Chat → Work continuations, or whether there is a recovery route for this particular problem?
@VeitB Could you please extend or remove the automatic one-day closure on this topic? It documents missing Work conversations and findings from a data-export inspection. I’d appreciate more time for others to compare experiences and suggest recovery steps. Thank you.
I’m seeing what appears to be a related issue with search indexing for Work conversations.
On the macOS ChatGPT app, I can see recent Work threads normally under Recents.
However, on chatgpt.com in Chrome, searching for either the exact same title or a distinctive substring returns “No results.” The thread is plainly still present in the desktop app, so this does not appear to be a deleted/missing-chat problem; rather, the web search index seems not to include at least some recent Work threads.
It would be useful to know whether this is a known limitation of web search for Work threads or an indexing/sync bug.
Repro: create/use a conversation in Work → confirm it appears in macOS app Recents → go to chatgpt.com → search for the exact thread title → no result.
A Work filter in web search, or simply indexing Work threads alongside Chat threads, would also make this considerably easier to diagnose and use.