Finding and exporting your Slack data

What it holds

Slack brings together channel discussions, direct messages and the files shared alongside them. Thread replies, timestamps and member references can connect a decision to the conversation that led to it, subject to workspace retention settings.

Where Slack shows the size

1. Sign in as a Workspace Owner or Admin (Org Owner or Org Admin on Enterprise).
2. Open Admin in the sidebar and choose Workspace analytics. On Enterprise, go through your organisation name to Tools & settings, Organization settings, Analytics.
3. On the Overview tab, note Messages sent and Files uploaded for the chosen period. The breakdown below splits public channels, private channels and DMs.
4. Use Export (or Export CSV on the other tabs) to keep the figures.
5. If you need the lifetime total, run the export below and count the messages in the JSON files.

Plan and admin role. Owners and Admins see analytics on every plan. Free shows only the Overview tab; Pro and Business+ add channel and member detail; Enterprise adds organisation-wide dashboards.

Exporting the full history

1. Sign in as a Workspace Owner or Admin. On Enterprise, an Org Owner, Org Admin or someone with the Export Admin role can do it.
2. On Free, Pro and Business+: Admin, Workspace settings, Security, Import & export data, then the Export tab.
3. On Enterprise: organisation name, Tools & settings, Organization settings, Security, Exports.
4. Pick the whole date range and start the export. Slack sends an email when the ZIP is ready.
5. To include private channels and DMs on Business+, the owner applies for the full self-serve export; Slack contacts the Primary Owner before approving. Enterprise customers ask Slack Support for the export tools.

Free and Pro export public channels only, as JSON. Free workspaces delete anything older than a year, and file links in Free exports cover only the last 90 days.

Once approved, Business+ can export public, private and direct conversations and schedule recurring exports. Enterprise can filter by conversation type, member or workspace.

Slack expects a legal basis, member consent or a legal requirement before private conversations are exported.

Standard exports link to files rather than including them. Enterprise customers can use the Discovery API through approved eDiscovery tools to collect files, edits and deletions as well.

You don't need to run an export to talk to us, and there's no need to clean it first — removing personal data is part of our work.