Manual method
- Confirm that you are an authorized workspace owner/admin or export administrator. Ordinary membership does not grant a whole-workspace export.
- On desktop, open the workspace administration settings, Security, then Import & export data.
- Choose Export, the permitted scope and date range, and start the export.
- After notification, download the ZIP. Keep JSON files and separately retrieve file links only where you remain authorized.
What you get: Public-channel exports are broadly available to eligible administrators. Private channels and DMs require eligible plans and approval. Standard exports contain file links, not a guaranteed independent copy of attachments. Free-plan file-link coverage is limited. Employer authorization and retention boundaries still apply. Provider instructions.
Size and waiting time
Planning example: 1 GB; light/heavy scenarios: 0.05–50 GB. These are estimates, not a measured population average or fixed limits. One modest workspace’s permitted text history. Downloaded attachment bytes are extra and can be tens or hundreds of GB.
Preparation: No universal preparation deadline is specified in the cited instructions. Allow hours to days as a planning estimate, plus any approval wait.
Network transfer of 1 GB: about 19 min at 10 Mbps, 4 min at 50 Mbps, or 2 min at 100 Mbps. This assumes 70% sustained throughput and excludes preparation, manual work and extraction. These are download estimates; online backup takes additional time at your upload speed. Transfer calculations and large-file examples.
Store and check your archive
An encrypted external SSD or hard drive is a good main archive for this collection. Allow roughly 3 GB of working space for the example, including an original, an extracted working copy and room to check it. Very compressed packages can need more. A USB key is useful for a spare copy, but should not be the only one. An encrypted online copy protects against losing the local devices.
Keep the original in slack/YYYY-MM-DD/original/. Record the account alias, selected scope, date range and missing items. Open old and recent records and sample attachments offline, then compare file sizes or checksums after copying. Keep the source account until you have checked the result. Storage and recovery instructions.
Sources and review
Public documentation was reviewed on 27 October 2026. No signed-in export or restoration was performed. Account options and availability can change; follow the current provider instructions.