Remember to Back Up Your Free Slack Chats Before They’re Wiped

Slack no longer keeps your workspace messages and files saved forever by default. Slack will regularly delete messages and files that are more than a year old. If you want to keep your workspace data safe, it’s best to back it up. Let me show you how.

Slack clears old messages

For free accounts, Slack gives you two options. You can either choose to keep all your free workspace messages for one year, or you can choose to keep them for 90 days. Both options have pros and cons. If you choose the first option, you can keep messages longer, but Slack won’t track message modifications or deleted files. If you keep it for 90 days, Slack will remember your text edits and deleted files or texts.

You can configure how messages are retained by going to Tools & Settings > Workspace Settings > Message History. And click “Expand”. You can enable these settings for public channels, private channels, and direct messages separately.

If your team is working on long-term projects or if you simply don’t want to lose any previous correspondence with your team members, it’s important to back up your entire Slack workspace periodically. If you’re on the free plan, make sure to create backups every two to three months.

Alternatively, you can get a paid subscription. Messages are not permanently cleared on a rolling basis for Professional accounts. They must retain messages for the life of the workspace. This way, Slack will save messages, edits, and deletions for life. But you can read on if you still want a manual backup of your Slack workspace for whatever reason.

What can you export

Free and Pro accounts get limited export options. Business and enterprise Slack accounts can export everything.

For the Free and Pro plans, Slack limits your export options to public channels only. You can download all messages on public channels dating back up to a year and file attachments up to 90 days. With enterprise and business accounts, everything (private channels, public channels, direct messages) will be exported from the beginning of the workspace.

Slack export tools are built into the Slack desktop client. It converts messages into JSON or TXT files that you can download as a ZIP file. You have the choice between JSON and TXT for direct messages and single user channels. The rest (including public channels and private channels) is exported in JSON format.

These JSON files include not only text and timestamps, but also message activity (editing and deleting), artboards, and message types.

How to export Slack conversations

Let’s start by clicking on the hamburger menu in the top corner and going to File > Settings and Administration > Workspace Settings.

The Settings and Permissions page should open in your browser. There should be an “Import/Export Data” button in the corner. Click on it and select the “Export” tab.

Depending on your Slack subscription plan, you’ll see a list of what is and isn’t included in the exported archive. I’m on a free plan, so it allows me to export public channels and app activities. My plan doesn’t include private channels, direct messages, or messaging activity.

Once you’ve chosen what you want to back up, select the time range. I’m downloading the entire lifespan of the workspace, so I choose “Full History”. Then click “Start Export”.

Your order will be placed on a waiting list in the “Previous Exports” section. Wait until the status changes to “Ready to download”. You will receive an email confirmation when the export archive is ready. Once it is ready, it will remain here for 10 days. Additionally, Slack will provide you with details about what is and isn’t included in the zip file.

The archive you just downloaded contains JSON files and folders with generic channel names. You can extract it into a folder and read the files using a text editor like Sublime. The timestamped JSON files in these folders contain all messages sent on their respective dates.

You can open these files directly using a text editor. You will have to read the JSON code, but messages can be seen as plain text inside the files. These messages also include bot messages, workspace activity (people joining and leaving channels or groups), archived messages, pins, and more.

The file attachments themselves are not archived as they remain on Slack’s servers. But you will find links to file attachments inside the JSON files. You can copy the URL of any file and paste it into the browser window and download it directly. This is one way to read exported messages and download attachments.

Lists, member details, channel names, bot and board integration logs are also included in the exported folder. You will see them as separate categorized files in the main folder.

How to import Slack conversations

Let’s look for the Import/Export tabs again, and this time select “Import from Slack”. There’s also a second “Import TXT or CSV” button, but we’ll talk about that later. Technically, this feature is for importing messages from one workspace to another, but you can also import old messages from the same workspace if they’ve been cleared.

Import from archive

We will import the backup zip file that we exported and saved on our computer previously. Start by clicking Next to skip the Review Import Guides section (you can read the guide if you want). Then download the zip file by clicking “download directly” and upload the file. Click Next.

If your zip file is larger than 2GB, you’ll have to upload it to a cloud service like Google Drive and then paste its direct link into the “Direct Download Link” window.

Next, you can decide how you want Slack to handle user messages. Since Slack thinks you’re importing from an old workspace to a new workspace, it wants you to decide whether you want to find common users between the two workspaces (by matching emails) and merge their messages. But we’re importing into the same workspace, so we’ll only have Slack import their messages if there’s a matching email without merging them. Then click “Next”.

Now we will merge the channels because we don’t want copies of the same channels. Then click “Next”.

Finally, click “Import” to complete the process. For smaller workspaces, it shouldn’t take more than two minutes.

If messages do not display correctly, or if unexpected duplicates appear after importing, you can click Reverse Import to undo the changes.

Import from TXT files

You can also import TXT or CSV files directly into the Slack client. These files must have a specific format specified in Slack Support pagesalong with a sample of text. Your Slack CSV or TXT file should contain timestamps, channel name, username, and text message in columns, all separated by a delimiter (for example, commas).

Exported JSON files will not work for this purpose, so you will have to convert them to CSV format.

In the Import/Export section, you can choose to upload a CSV file and import messages. If something goes wrong, you have the option to undo the changes using the Undo feature as well.

Now you know how to keep old Slack messages safe even if they’re automatically deleted by a new Slack policy. Remember to keep regular backups and use undo features in case anything goes wrong.