What to do with company email, Slack and files when you close

Export first, cancel last. Once you cancel Google Workspace, Google deletes users’ data and says it can’t be restored. Microsoft 365 gives you about four months (30 days “Expired”, then 90 days “Disabled”, for most business subscriptions) before data is deleted. Slack lets every plan export public channels, but private channels and DMs need a paid plan and an application. Decide what you must keep, export it to storage you control, check that it opens, and only then cancel.

How long each vendor keeps your data

System	What happens after you stop paying	Can you export after cancelling?
Google Workspace	Users’ data is deleted and can’t be restored; deletion can take up to 90 days	Not for core data: the Data Export tool needs an active subscription for Gmail, Drive and Chat
Microsoft 365 (most business plans)	Expired: 30 days, users keep access. Disabled: 90 days, admins only. Then deleted, and the subscription can’t be reactivated	Yes, by admins during the Disabled stage
Microsoft 365, cancelled	Data “might be deleted after 90 days and will be deleted no later than 180 days” after cancellation	Admins, until deletion
Slack (free plan)	Messages and files older than one year are deleted on a rolling basis; only the last 90 days are visible	Public channels only

Microsoft’s timings differ for some plans: multi-year enterprise agreements stay Expired for 90 days, and deleting a subscription outright skips the grace stages and deletes SharePoint and OneDrive data immediately. Check your plan in the admin center.

How to export each system

Google Workspace. A super admin uses the Data Export tool, which copies the organization’s data to a Google Cloud Storage bucket. Google’s conditions: the admin account must be at least 30 days old and have 2-Step Verification on, the subscription must be active, and organizations with more than 1,000 users should contact support first. The export is ready no earlier than 48 hours after you start it, typically takes 72 hours, and can take up to 14 days. Google deletes the exported files automatically 60 days after the export starts, so download them to your own storage.

Microsoft 365. Admins can export mailboxes with eDiscovery and copy SharePoint and OneDrive content while the subscription is active or Expired. In the Disabled stage, users lose access but admins can still back up data.

Slack. Workspace owners and admins can export public-channel messages and file links as JSON on any plan. On Business+, owners can apply for a self-serve export that includes private channels and DMs. On Enterprise, org owners ask Slack support to enable export tools. Note that the export contains links to files, not always the files themselves; download files you need separately.

What you are required to keep

Records rules apply to the company even after it closes. The IRS says to keep most tax records for three years, employment tax records for at least four, and some for up to seven. Form I-9s are kept for three years after hire or one year after employment ends, whichever is later. Contracts and litigation holds can require longer. Keep these in an export you control; the email system itself will not be there.

What the rest of the archive might be worth

After the required records, most companies still have years of email, chat, documents and tickets that nobody needs to keep. Deleting them is one choice. Another is to license de-identified copies to an AI developer. micro1, for example, runs a Defunct Company Data Partnership for companies that are no longer operating, with a published bar of 30 or more employees. The constraint is that the records have to exist, so this decision comes before you cancel the accounts.

A safe order of operations

1. Freeze deletions: stop any retention policy or user cleanup that removes data.
2. Decide what to keep for legal reasons and what else might have value.
3. Run exports from each system and download them to storage the company or its successor controls.
4. Open a sample from each export to check it is complete.
5. Settle any licence or sale of records that needs the live accounts.
6. Cancel the subscriptions.