What happens to your data when you cancel Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or Slack

It gets deleted, often sooner than you expect. When you cancel a cloud subscription, remove a user or drop to a free plan, the clock starts on your company's history. Some of it can go at once, some within 20 or 30 days, and most of it within a few months.

That history now has a value it did not have a few years ago. AI developers pay companies for de-identified copies of their email, chat, documents and tickets, and longer histories are usually worth more. This guide sets out what Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Slack do with your data, and what to do before you cancel anything.

Microsoft 365

When a Microsoft 365 for business subscription ends, it moves through stages before the data is deleted. These are the standard durations for most subscriptions, as set out by Microsoft. Since 9 February 2026, the Expired stage no longer applies to licence-based subscriptions bought directly from Microsoft under a Microsoft Customer Agreement:

Four details matter most:

• After a cancellation, Microsoft says: "Any customer data that you leave behind might be deleted after 90 days and will be deleted no later than 180 days after cancellation."
• A monthly subscription cancelled within the cancellation window skips the Expired stage and goes straight to Disabled.
• Deleting a subscription outright skips both stages, and SharePoint and OneDrive content "is immediately deleted."
• Buying a new subscription of the same type afterwards does not bring the old data back.

When someone leaves

This is where most companies lose history without noticing. According to Microsoft's guidance on removing a former employee:

• If you remove a user's licence, their email, contacts and calendar are kept for 30 days and then deleted permanently.
• If you delete the user's account, their OneDrive and Outlook content is kept for 30 days, and the account can be restored during that time.

Every leaver whose licence was removed more than 30 days ago has already gone from the history, unless their mailbox was kept. To keep a leaver's email without paying for a licence, convert the mailbox to a shared mailbox, which holds up to 50 GB without one. If you need a legal hold in Microsoft Purview, check your plan first, because a hold needs the right licence.

Google Workspace

Google's warning is blunt: "After you cancel your Google Workspace subscription, your users' Google Workspace data will be deleted and can't be restored." Google advises downloading anything you want to keep with its Data Export tool before you cancel (Google Workspace Admin Help).

• Deletion is not always instant. For email-verified subscriptions, Google says deletion can take up to 90 days, and users cannot reach Drive during that time.
• Third-party apps connected to Workspace keep their own data. It is not deleted automatically, so it needs exporting from each app.
• Deleted users can only be restored for a short time. Google says: "You can restore a user account (including administrator accounts) up to 20 days after deleting it." After that, "the data is gone and you can't restore it".

Slack

The free plan deletes old history

If a workspace is on Slack's free plan, or drops to it, old history goes. Since 26 August 2024, Slack has been deleting messages and files that are more than one year old on free workspaces, on a rolling basis. Slack says: "It will not be possible to restore messages and files once deletion occurs." Free workspaces can see the last 90 days of history.

So downgrading a paid workspace to save money as a company winds down can wipe out years of conversations.

What you can export

Slack's export options depend on the plan, according to its export guide:

Private channels and direct messages are often where the real work happened. If they matter, keep the workspace on a paid plan until the records have been valued and, if needed, exported.

Other tools

Every tool has its own rules, and they are not always written down clearly. Atlassian, for example, says it "reserves the right to deactivate Free Jira Cloud sites due to inactivity." Before you cancel GitHub, Jira, a CRM, Dropbox or anything else, check what happens to the data and take a backup.

Why this matters now

Deleting old data used to cost nothing. Now it can cost a company real money. Buyers and brokers value records by years in operation, headcount, volume of data and the tools used (MIT Technology Review), and closed startups have been paid $10,000 to $100,000 per deal. Our guide to what company data is worth sets out the prices.

There is a legal side too. If you are closing a company, GOV.UK advises keeping business documents for 7 years after it is struck off. Our guide to closing a company explains what you must keep and who owns the records once the company is gone.

Before you cancel: a checklist

1. Do not delete subscriptions outright. In Microsoft 365, that removes SharePoint and OneDrive content straight away.
2. Keep leavers' email. Convert mailboxes to shared mailboxes, or put them on hold, before you remove licences.
3. Keep Slack on a paid plan until you have decided what to do with its history.
4. Export what you need. Use the admin export tools for each system.
5. Write down what you have. Which systems, which years and roughly how many people used them.
6. Get a valuation before you cancel. It takes basic facts, not files.

TydeX values company records from basic facts and finds out what buyers will pay before anything is deleted. Get a free valuation. It takes about two minutes.