Table of Contents
- Why Are ChatGPT 5 Users Losing Their Chat Histories? Here’s What You Need to Know
- What Is Happening to Chat Histories?
- The Main Problem: “conversation_tree_corrupt” Error
- Why Is This Happening?
- What Other Users Are Saying
- Simple Ways to Fix These Problems
- Create a New Project and Move Conversations
- Use Desktop App with Web URLs
- Back Up Your Work Regularly
- Search for Lost Conversations
- What This Means for Your Work
- What OpenAI Is Doing
- How to Protect Yourself Going Forward
Why Are ChatGPT 5 Users Losing Their Chat Histories? Here’s What You Need to Know
The excitement around ChatGPT 5’s launch on August 7, 2025 quickly turned into worry for many users. People are having a hard time getting their chat histories to load. This is especially bad for users who organize their work conversations using the Projects feature.
What Is Happening to Chat Histories?
When ChatGPT 5 came out, it created problems that users never saw before. Some people click on their old chats in the sidebar, but the chats won’t open. Others see only 10 or 11 recent conversations and can’t scroll down to see more.
One user named njbsuperman explained his problem on the OpenAI community forum:
“I utilize the ‘Project’ functionality in ChatGPT Plus and I have existing projects… Currently, there is a big issue with ChatGPT 5 when working in the Project files… that ChatGPT 5 does not understand how to code or ChatGPT 5 does not know how to review or compare files either in chat or the project files knowledgebase for each project. It also has a difficult time looking through past discussions.”
The Main Problem: “conversation_tree_corrupt” Error
The worst issue is an error message that says “conversation_tree_corrupt”. This error makes entire conversations impossible to open. Users see a message that says “Unable to load, retry? The conversation is corrupt. Please start a new conversation”.
This problem happens most often when people use ChatGPT with other tools like IntelliJ. When this error appears, users lose all their work from that conversation. It’s like having your computer crash and losing a whole day’s work.
Why Is This Happening?
OpenAI support told users that the problems come from too many people using ChatGPT 5 at the same time. They said:
“We’re currently experiencing higher-than-usual demand related to the GPT-5 launch, which is impacting availability and performance for some users.”
The company’s servers are working too hard, which causes:
- Slow responses
- Glitches when loading conversations
- Complete disappearance of chat histories
- Problems with the Mac app and web version
What Other Users Are Saying
On the r/ChatGPT subreddit, a user called IllustriousWelder87 posted about chats disappearing from both regular history and Projects. Other Plus subscribers like Gentleigh21 and RoyalWe666 said they lost conversations around the launch date.
Users also report these specific problems:
- Only seeing the newest conversations with no way to load older ones
- Being able to find old chats by searching exact phrases, but this fix doesn’t last long
- Projects loading only up to the broken chat, hiding all older conversations
Simple Ways to Fix These Problems
While waiting for OpenAI to fix these issues permanently, users have found some helpful tricks:
Create a New Project and Move Conversations
Some people make a new, parallel project using the desktop app. Then they carefully move all working conversations one by one. This takes time but can save your important chats.
Use Desktop App with Web URLs
Another user found that you can sometimes open stuck conversations in the desktop app by copying the web URL from Google Chrome and pasting it directly into the desktop app.
Back Up Your Work Regularly
Don’t trust the Projects feature to keep your work safe. Copy and paste important conversations, code, and analysis into other documents like Notion or text files. This way, if the “conversation_tree_corrupt” error happens, you won’t lose everything.
Search for Lost Conversations
Try searching for exact phrases from your missing conversations. This sometimes brings them back temporarily, even though it’s not a permanent fix.
What This Means for Your Work
These problems are especially bad for people who use ChatGPT for work projects. When you spend hours building context with the AI, losing that conversation means starting over from scratch. This is particularly hard for:
- Programmers working on complex coding projects
- Researchers building up detailed analysis over time
- Content creators developing ideas through multiple conversations
- Students tracking problem-solving steps
What OpenAI Is Doing
OpenAI says their engineers are working to boost capacity and fix these problems. However, they haven’t given a specific timeline for when everything will work normally again.
The company brought back the GPT-4o model because of complaints about GPT-5. This shows they’re listening to user feedback, but it also shows how serious these problems are.
How to Protect Yourself Going Forward
Until these issues get fixed completely, here are smart steps to take:
- Save important work outside of ChatGPT using other apps or documents
- Use the desktop app when possible, as it seems more stable than the web version
- Don’t rely on Projects for storing critical information
- Take screenshots of important conversations as backup
- Test the search function to see if you can recover missing chats
The ChatGPT 5 launch has created real problems for users who depend on chat history and the Projects feature. While OpenAI works on permanent fixes, the temporary solutions above can help you keep working and protect your important conversations.
These problems show how quickly things can go wrong when new technology gets released to millions of users at once. The good news is that OpenAI knows about these issues and is working to fix them. In the meantime, being careful about backing up your work will save you from losing hours of valuable conversations.