How to export Slack data: what each plan allows
The short answer
What you can export depends on your plan. Free and Pro export public channels only. Business+ exports public and private channels and DMs after the Primary Owner approves. Enterprise adds filtered and custom exports. JSON exports hold links to files, not the files.
Slack's help page treats the export as an admin task and hands you a plan-by-plan menu.
Who can export on each plan?
Free and Pro workspaces: Workspace Owners and Admins can export public channels only.
Business+: Workspace Owners and Admins, with private channels, direct messages and a channel audit report available after the Primary Owner approves. Enterprise: Org Owners, plus the Export Admin system role.
File links reach back 90 days on Free and have no time limit on Pro, Business+ and Enterprise. Enterprise is the plan with custom, filtered and user-specific exports, in JSON or TXT.
What does an export contain?
Each channel or direct message gets its own folder of date-stamped JSON files. Reference files such as users.json, channels.json, groups.json and dms.json sit beside them.
Slack says JSON exports contain no workspace files, only links that point back to them. A single-user TXT export does include a files folder.
How long does it take?
I found no Slack page that gives a time or a size cap for an export. Treat any figure you hear as unverified until Slack states it.
Is exporting your job in a corpus deal?
micro1's CFO said in an undated recorded forum talk that its forward-deployed engineering team helps your IT people with the transfer. The CFO estimated about 10 hours of work over a week or two from one or two IT people (self-reported, recording undated).
For the longer version, see how long a data transfer takes and micro1's process.
What should you check before exporting?
The route you pick decides which terms apply. Slack's API terms, limit apps that pull data through the API, and they are written for app providers. What Slack's terms say about exported data reads the text.
Channels also hold your staff's words and other companies' words. Run the rights check first, then look at the Slack licensing overview and how to size a workspace.
Talk to a privacy or commercial lawyer in your state before you sign.
micro1 may pay us a referral fee if a company we introduce goes ahead with it. How we are paid
Apply to micro1's data partnership (paid link)micro1's own data-partnerships pagePaid link. How we are paid
Vaultfish helps you run the process. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. If you need counsel who knows this area, we can point you to one. Ask for a referral
