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Productivity
Slack
Updated Sep 29, 2026
Slack is workplace messaging, and there is no export button on your account because your data is not only yours. The export tool belongs to whoever owns the workspace, so what comes back is JSON covering your profile and your messages, and only if they bother to run it. Getting your own history out otherwise means asking them, or filing a privacy request and waiting.
What you'll get
Messages and Threads (Admin Run)Users and Workspace DetailsDirect and Group MessagesFile Links (Not the Files)Integration LogsChannel Audit Report (CSV)
Before you start
- Work out whether you actually run this workspace. If you do, the path is Admin, then Workspace settings, then Security, then Import and export data, then the Export tab. On Enterprise Grid it sits under organisation settings instead.
- Use the desktop client. Slack documents that path and does not really say anything about the browser.
- If you are not the owner, you have two routes and neither of them is a button. Ask them to run an export, or file a personal privacy request at slack.com/trust/privacy-request, which Slack verifies against your account email.
How to download
- Choose the scope. Public channels work on every plan. Private channels, DMs and group DMs are Business+ and Enterprise only, and on Business+ the owner has to apply to Slack for that tool first.
- Start the export. Slack emails you when the file is ready and does not publish how long that takes, so do not build a plan around a date.
- Download on a stable connection. An interrupted download restarts the export rather than picking up where it left off.
- Take it as soon as the email arrives. Slack does not document how long the link stays valid.
Pro tip
Two things worth knowing before you ask anyone. The export is run by a workspace owner or admin, so asking for one is a conversation rather than a click. And the JSON holds URLs rather than files, so unless the workspace is on Enterprise and running a single-user text export, the pictures and documents are not in the archive at all.
After the download
- Files are links. Every attachment is a URL, and if the file or the channel has been deleted since, the link no longer resolves. Anything you care about should come out of the app separately.
- On the free plan, content older than a year is left out and file links only reach back 90 days. The widely repeated claim that free workspaces only kept 90 days of messages is out of date, that tier was retired years ago.
- Thread replies are flattened. They appear inline in the conversation in timestamp order rather than nested, so you cannot reliably reconstruct which message was replying to which.
- The JSON is raw. You have to map user IDs through users.json and channel IDs through channels.json before any of it reads as text, and every timestamp is a Unix integer. Budget an afternoon, or a viewer.
- Edited and deleted messages only appear if your retention settings kept them, and on many plans they did not. The history in the export can quietly differ from the history that used to be there.
- Folders only exist for dates that actually have messages, so a gap in the archive is a silent gap rather than an error message.
- Bot messages are included in the broad exports and Slack documents no way to filter them out. Slackbot traffic can be a large share of the volume.
- Slack Connect channels and guest accounts are not addressed in Slack's own export documentation, so take what arrives rather than expecting a clear answer either way.
- Store the archive in ProtonDrive or pCloud for an off-site backup
- Not sure where to store your export? See our backup guide.