How Do We Export Slack Messages Without Admin Permissions?

As a regular Slack user without admin rights, we can export Slack messages thanks to a great open-source project, slackdump.

Save or export your private and public Slack messages, threads, files, and users locally without admin privileges.

Download a release here and unzip the file. Open a terminal, navigate to the unzipped folder, and run:

./slackdump workspace new <workspace name>

The workspace name is part of our Slack URL: <workspace name>.slack.com. After running the command above, a menu will appear. Choose the Interactive option:

A browser window will open, asking us to enter our email address and password:

Before continuing, get the ID of the channel we want to export. We can find this by selecting the open conversation details option in each channel.

After signing in successfully, run the following command to begin the export:

./slackdump export -workspace <workspace name> <channel ID>

As a result of the command, a ZIP file will be created in the following format: slackdump_yyyymmdd_hhmmss.zip. Use the following command to view the data:

./slackdump view <file name>

As a result, a browser will display your exported messages in an easy-to-read format:

Thank you, and happy coding.