Teams Chat Extraction

Question

Hello,

I have an enterprise account via GoDaddy. I am the sole owner of the company and have the administrative rights. I wish to extract all teams chats of which I am a member and would like to have the full history of each. I have tried copy pasting with no success. I do not want only those 20 chats or so that I created, but specifically those that I am a part of.

Many thanks,

Gregory

Answer 1

Hi @Gregory Tugendhat

I completely understand the frustration here wanting to keep a full copy of your own conversations feels like it should be simple, and I know copy-pasting everything by hand is tedious and just doesn't hold up for full history.

At present, there isn't a built-in "export my chats" button for work or school (enterprise) accounts. That one-click option only exists for personal/Teams Free accounts, which is exactly why the manual approach hasn't worked for you.

If your subscription is Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, there is a supported way to do this, using eDiscovery in the Microsoft Purview portal. It works because a compliance copy of every chat is quietly stored in the Exchange Online mailbox of each participant so it can reach all the chats you're part of, not just the ones you started.

For more details, please refer to: Get started with eDiscovery

• Sign in to the portal at purview.microsoft.com using your admin account.
• Select the eDiscovery solution card, then click Cases on the left menu and choose Create a case. Give it a name that's easy to recognize, such as Extract Teams.
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• Then click Create a search and create your new search there
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• • Open the search, go to the Data sources tab, and click Add sources.
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• On the left, under Show for, select People only.
• Search for your own name or email, tick the box next to your user profile, then click Save and close.
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• Click + Add conditions and choose Message kind (it may show as Type).
• Change the middle dropdown operator to Contains any of (or Equals any of).
• In the text field, search for and select the purple MT – Microsoft Teams tag.
• Click Run query. On the pop-up panel, leave Statistics checked and click Run query again
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• Once the search finishes calculating your total matches, click the Export button on the top menu bar.
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• Give the export job a name (for example, testing).
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• Scroll to the Export format section and select Create .msg files for messages. This downloads each chat as an individual file you can double-click to read, rather than a single encrypted .PST archive.
• Leave the remaining defaults as they are, scroll to the bottom, and click the blue Export button.

• Click the Process manager button at the top right of the screen (next to the trash can icon).
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• When your job progress reaches 100% / Completed, click on its name and hit Download.

For more details, please refer to: Export search results in eDiscovery

If the eDiscovery route doesn't quite fit (say your plan doesn't include it, or you'd prefer to pull the data programmatically), you might want to look into the Microsoft Teams Export APIs through Microsoft Graph. Based on the documentation, this route is designed to retrieve messages from the chats a user is part of 1:1, group, and meeting chats rather than only the ones they created. It's worth noting this generally isn't a click-and-go tool. It runs as an app rather than through a normal sign-in, so some setup is typically involved

For more details, please refer to: Export content with the Microsoft Teams Export APIs - Microsoft Teams

I hope this helps clarify the next steps. Please feel free to reply if you have any additional details or questions.

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Answer 2

There is no supported "Export all Teams chats I participate in" button in Microsoft Teams. (unfortunately)

For business accounts, large-scale chat exports are typically handled through Microsoft 365 compliance tools (such as Content Search or eDiscovery), subject to licensing and permissions.

Since your account is provided through GoDaddy, the first step is to determine which Microsoft 365 plan and compliance features are included in your subscription.

Please provide your Microsoft 365 plan details, and the community can help identify the available export methods.