Accessing old chat history from users belonging to a domain that will no longer be in use

Question

Our small business group began using Microsoft Teams in early 2020 (the Classic/Free version). Then a few years later we switched to the Essentials subscription and set up a unique ".onmicrosoft" domain to continue using Teams as we wanted to keep all the previous features and data without switching to a new platform.

However, earlier this year our company's Outlook email administrator updated our subscription to now include the paid version of Teams. In light of this, we inevitably want to stop using the Teams Essentials accounts that were made using the above mentioned domain and cancel that subscription to cut an unnecessary cost.

The issue is, for legal/compliance reasons, we need to somehow either archive everyone's chat history and any data associated with their accounts, or at the very least be able to go into anyone's account and view their history long after the subsctiontin is terminated.

So far my research has resulted in no straightforward method to do such a backup, and although we are aware that there are third-party services out there that will manually do the task for a fee, we do not wish to go that route unless it is a last resort. We are also hesitant to just cancel it and run the risk of losing all that data under the assumption that those chats will still be there to access if we simply log into any given user's account.

I could not find concrete evidence that an account, once its Teams Essentials sub is cancelled, retains its private chats and/or group channel history. Any suggestions or info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi @Michael Perez

Based on your description, we recommend that you change the domain name for the current account instead of activating a new account. This will avoid losing data and chat history.

For more information on how to use custom domains, please refer to this document.

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