Like nearly anybody coping with company groups, I spend plenty of time on Slack. However I am not a Slack guru. I simply chat on the channels I am assigned by purchasers and companions. As such, I’ve by no means given a lot consideration to archiving and preserving conversational data. It is simply part of my work day.
However just lately one of many crew members working for a shopper left the corporate. I’ll miss working with that individual and need the most effective for them. Right this moment, after I went to our personal Slack direct message dialog thread, I discovered it was lacking. As a result of their account was not on Slack, their direct message thread was additionally gone.
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However that thread had lots of vital info I’ll want as I proceed to supply providers to the shopper. It had my marching orders for the following few months. It had discussions of helpful assets and stats I want to supply providers. There have been additionally discussions about material consultants on the challenge, their experience areas, and their roles. In different phrases, that message thread was priceless. It even had discussions of agreed-upon charges.
With out giving it a lot thought, I believed a Slack message historical past would persist like an e-mail archive. I at all times assumed I may return in and look stuff up for reference each time vital. However after I appeared on the direct messages space on the left facet of the Slack display, I may not see my chat historical past with this individual.
discover a message archive
Because it seems, there’s a method to discover the message archive. Hit the little clock icon on the prime of your display and see a historical past of current conversations.
Sadly, these conversations do not final on that record without end. Solely the previous couple of conversations stay accessible. Even when you faucet Present extra, message historical past is restricted. Additionally, older conversations with accounts that have not been on Slack for a month or so are not accessible. I confirmed this reality as a result of an intensive dialog thread with one other shopper crew member who left the challenge about six weeks in the past is totally gone.
However, when you act rapidly after an account is eliminated, you’ll find the archive to put it aside.
save a Slack message archive
Slack does let you export and save a message archive, however solely if you’re the channel proprietor or admin.
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That mentioned, there are methods — even when you’re not a channel superuser — to seize all of the historical past of a given message thread. These approaches are usually not significantly elegant, however they do work.
Save archive utilizing reduce, paste, and Phrase
The primary method captures your complete message thread textual content right into a Phrase doc, which it can save you, flip right into a PDF, or in any other case archive. Theoretically, you can use one other phrase processor, however I examined it with Phrase. You need to use one thing that saves wealthy textual content in order that photos, emojis, and hyperlinks are preserved.
- In Slack, choose the message thread you need to save.
- Scroll to the start, and left-click on the primary phrase of textual content.
- Scroll to the underside of the thread, maintain down your shift key, and click on after the final phrase.
- Go as much as the Edit menu, choose Copy.
- Swap to a clean Phrase doc and click on paste.
- Reserve it and you’ve got an editable, searchable, clickable archive.
The one draw back of this method is that the ultimate saved archive will not look precisely prefer it does in Slack. To repair that, strive the following method.
Save archive utilizing scrolling screenshot software program
This method screenshots all the message thread, even when you scroll for web page after web page. To perform this activity, you may need to use software program that may seize a scrolling web page. A number of Chrome extensions can do that work, however to seize the Slack app, I like to recommend utilizing CleanShot X on the Mac or SnagIt! on Home windows.
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Each instruments let you choose a window to be captured, allow you to scroll down the home windows, after which save that enormous constructed graphic as a PNG, JPEG, or PDF.
This method provides you a dialog that appears precisely prefer it appeared in Slack. With out OCR instruments, you’ll be able to’t search or get to the underlying information, but it surely’s evidentiary snapshot when you ever have to show what was mentioned with one other social gathering.
Utilizing command-line instruments
There’s an open-source answer that may additionally enable you to obtain Slack conversations, however — like most command-line instruments — it is sophisticated. Should you’re , level your browser to SlackDump on Github. This software permits you to dump messages and threads, however you may want to question Slack for consumer ID numbers and message IDs.
Additionally, the output of the dump is a JSON file, so to learn or reproduce any of the messages, you may want a JSON reader like this on-line JSON formatter. Along with the formatting and structuring challenges, you will not get output that appears like your conversations. For that output, you are higher off utilizing the scrolling screenshot method I detailed above.
The important thing takeaway
The important thing takeaway is not the how-to recommendation from above. The important thing takeaway is to know that Slack isn’t like e-mail, and it would not robotically create an archive of your conversations. In case your conversations are vital, you should be proactive to avoid wasting them.
You may need to add archiving your Slack conversations to your regular workflow procedures if documenting conversational historical past is vital sufficient to you.
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