Disclaimer

The author is not responsible for unauthorized use of the script. This script is provided "as is" and any use of it is at your own risk.

slack-exporter

A Slack standalone script for exporting messages and file attachments from private channels, using Slack's new Conversations API.

A similar service is provided by Slack for workspace admins at https://my.slack.com/services/export (where my can be replaced with your full workspace name to refer to a workspace different than your default). However, it can only access public channels, while slack-exporter can retrieve data from any private channel accessible to your user account.

This script exports the history of messages and threads into a zip archive compatible with Slack's built-in import feature.

Authentication with Slack

There are one way to use slack-exporter (detailed below). A Slack API token is required to communicate with your workspace.

1. Visit https://api.slack.com/apps/ and sign in to your workspace.
2. Click Create New App, enter a name (e.g., Slack Exporter), and select your workspace.
3. In prior versions of the Slack API, OAuth permissions had to be specified manually. Now, when prompted for an App Manifest, just paste in the contents of the slack.yaml file in the root of this repo.
4. Select Install to Workspace at the top of that page (or Reinstall to Workspace if you have done this previously) and accept at the prompt.
5. Copy the OAuth Access Token (which will generally start with xoxp for user-level permissions)

Usage

exporter.py can create an archive of all conversation history in your workspace which is accessible to your user account.

1. Either add

   SLACK_USER_TOKEN = xoxp-xxxxxxxxxxxxx...
   

   to a file named .env in the same directory as exporter.py, or run the following in your shell (replacing the value with the user token you obtained in the Authentication with Slack section above).

   export SLACK_USER_TOKEN=xoxp-xxxxxxxxxxxxx...

2. Run python exporter.py --help to view the available export options.

Known issues

1. If you will not import or merge users (selecting the "Don't import these users, just their messages" option) at the user import stage, you need to use the --skipfiles option because importing into Slack will not complete properly. For example: python exporter.py --all -o /home/myuser/slack-import/ --skipfiles
2. If you want to import history with files, you don't need to use the --skipfiles option, but you must select one of these options: "Merge", "Create and invite", or "Create as deactivated" at the user import stage when you import a messages history using Slack's built-in import feature. For example: python exporter.py --all -o /home/myuser/slack-import/

Author

The original script author Seb Seager

Forked by Ivan Zhukov

License

This software is available under the GPL.